Cecilienhof was the last palace built by the House of Hohenzollern that ruled the Kingdom of Prussia and the German Empire, until the end of World War I.

[1] Cecilienhof is located in the northern part of the large Neuer Garten park, close to the shore of the Jungfernsee lake.

Other structures within the park close to Schloss Cecilienhof include an orangery, an artificial grotto (Muschelgrotte [de]), the "Gothic Library", and the Dairy in the New Garden, also constructed for king Frederick William II.

Since the Marmorpalais, which had been the traditional Potsdam residence of the Hohenzollern crown prince, had become inadequate for current tastes, Emperor Wilhelm II ordered the establishment of a fund for constructing a new palace at Potsdam for his oldest son, Crown Prince Wilhelm (William) and his wife, Duchess Cecilie of Mecklenburg-Schwerin on 19 December 1912.

On 13 April 1914 the Imperial Ministry and the Saalecker Werkstätten signed a building contract that envisaged a completion date of 1 October 1915 and a construction cost of 1,498,000 Reichsmark for the new palace.

It was based on English Tudor style buildings, arranged around several courtyards featuring half-timbered walls, bricks and 55 different decorative chimney stacks.

[2]: 7–9 Crown Prince Wilhelm was so impressed with cottage and Tudor style homes like Bidston Court in Birkenhead (England) that Cecilienhof was inspired by it.

[6] However, when the revolution erupted in November 1918, for security reasons Cecilie and her six children moved for a while to the Neues Palais, where the wife of Emperor Wilhelm II, Empress Augusta Victoria, was living.

Only her sons Wilhelm (William) and Louis Ferdinand remained at Cecilienhof while they attended a public Realgymnasium (school) in Potsdam.

In June 1926, a referendum on expropriating the former ruling Princes of Germany without compensation failed and as a consequence, the financial situation of the Hohenzollern family improved considerably.

[2]: 9–12 Wilhelm subsequently broke the promise he had made to Gustav Stresemann, who allowed him to return to Germany, to stay out of politics.

Cecilie fled in early February 1945 as the Red Army drew closer to Berlin, without being able to salvage much in terms of her possessions.

As Berlin itself had been too heavily damaged by Allied bombing and street-to-street fighting, Cecilienhof in Potsdam was selected as the location for the conference.

The delegations were to be housed in the leafy suburb of Potsdam-Babelsberg, which had suffered only slight damage in the bombing raids and also offered the advantage that the streets to the conference venue were easy to guard.