Antique Temple

The Antique Temple was, like the Sanssouci Picture Gallery, envisioned from the beginning as a museum and at the time of Frederick the Great could be visited after notifying the castellan at the New Palace.

Fifty busts of marble, basalt and bronze sat on brackets, 31 of which also came from Polignac's collection; the rest were from Friedrich's favourite sister, Princess Wilhelmine, Margravine of Brandenburg-Bayreuth.

In 1828 the sculptures and busts followed, which, after being restored in the workshop of the sculptor Christian Daniel Rauch, found their place in the Altes Museum in Lustgarten.

In June 1828 Friedrich William III had the second version of a coffin designed by Christian Daniel Rauch set into the now-empty Antique Temple.

The coffin's famous original lay in the mausoleum in the park of Charlottenburg Palace in Berlin, which was completed for Queen Louise, who died on 19 July 1810.

Until 1904 the copy remained in the Antique Temple, and arrived in Spring 1877 in the Hohenzollern Museum, situated in Monbijou Palace, which was open to the public.

A marble relief of Emperor Trajan on his Horse, in gold framing, likewise still decorates the area of a wall over the entrance door today.