The park covers approximately 116 hectares (290 acres)[2] In 1682 Frederick William of Brandenburg, the Great Elector, commissioned the first hunting lodge Jagdschloss Glienicke next to the uninhabited village Klein-Glienicke which suffered badly in the Thirty Years' War.

In 1747 the hospital head Dr. Mirow bought the tree garden and the new vineyard which were neglected since the Soldier King's death and established there an estate where besides farming kilns for bricks and lime were operated.

The Mirow estate had different owners until the Prussian lieutenant general and head equerry Count Carl von Lindenau (de) bought it in 1796[4]: 378  and converted it into an ornamented farm.

[6]: 24  While the mansion was converted into Glienicke Palace, designed by Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Prince Charles developed the park together with Lenné and other gardeners in the following decades to the extent which is still visible today.

Visiting his sister Prince Charles travelled several times to Saint Petersburg, where he was especially fascinated by Pavlovsk Park, which was designed as a classic English landscape garden.

[8]: 367  Friedrich Leopold's intention to sell off the areas of the 1841 park extension was blocked by the Prussian state resulting in a lawsuit which ended with the Prince's death in 1931.

Julius Lippert, Reichskommissar of Berlin pressed the legal guardian of the heir(a minor) to sell and used the confiscated assets of the German bank manager and art collector Herbert M. Gutmann to pay.

After being appointed mayor of Berlin in 1937 Julius Lippert planned to have Glienicke as his official residence and let acquire the remaining part which was not owned by the city.

After World War II early ideas to convert the park into a huge West Berlin sports complex close to the border to the Soviet occupation zone were dropped.

[6][10] Besides the restoration of Palace Glienicke and some other buildings by Karl Friedrich Schinkel and his students since the 1950s it took until 1969 for the park itself being regarded as a work of art by the West Berlin city administration.

Since 1992 the park is part of the EU special protection area for wild birds "Western Düppel Forest" (Westlicher Düppeler Forst).

Egells (de) were installed in Glienicke when in 1838 the pumping station started operating with a steam engine, a gift by Charles’ father which was also manufactured by F.A.

The pleasure ground in Glienicke is rather a portrayal of an antique villa complex as described by Pliny the Younger than a reflexion on a longing for Italy(Italiensehnsucht).

On 23 October 1837 Prince Charles, Schinkel, Persius and Lenné met in Glienicke to discuss the fountain near the greenhouse which Count von Lindenau commissioned at the end of the 18th century.

On the balustrade at the rear of the fountain, which is divided by the flight of steps from the palace, were placed four allegorical terracotta statues (created around 1855) describing both commerce, science, art and military as the cornerstones of the state and the four seasons.

The middle pillar had originally a zinc-cast Kore designed by August Kiss which later was replaced with a marble copy of the Felicitas Publica in the monument Max-Joseph Denkmal by Christian Daniel Rauch in Munich.

[14]: 120–121  Rotunda, stone bridge and the residence Villa Schöningen on the opposite bank of the river Havel formed a little architectural ensemble on its own.

[13]: 33–38  In autumn and winter 1822/23 Charles had accompanied his father and his brother William on a four and a half month journey to Italy, where they spent four weeks in the Naples region visiting the excavation sites of Herculaneum and Pompeii.

[14]: 4–6 Just north of the Casino was a dummy frigate, designed by Schinkel, on an artificial peninsula which presumably was thrown up as a bank of earth only in the 18th century serving as wharf for the ships transporting bricks and limestone.

Historic building parts were purchased in Venice to be used as spolia in the Cloister Courtyard where Charles developed the first collection of Byzantine works of art in modern Europe.

[21]: 51-  The Cloister Courtyard represents an unusual mixture of a romantic architecture depicting the contemporary atmosphere and of the function as a museum, so to speak a very late Hermitage with scientific pretension and political statement.

[8]: 16  In 1874 a late neoclassical observation loggia was put on the tower and the coach house was expanded including a second storey which was removed after World War II.

Due to its great weight it was probably kept at outdoor places for the tea parties during the summer season which lasted from 1 May(day of purchase of Glienicke) until 3 November (Hubertus's hunt).

For the Frog's Fountain Friedrich Wilhelm Dankberg (de) created a statue of a boy carrying a bowl from which Prince Charles commissioned a zinc copy.

The east of the Hunter's Court and the wooded valleys became part of the park when Frederick William, who became King of Prussia in June 1840, gave the area on the basis of a kind of perpetual usufruct to his brother Charles as a Christmas present in 1840.

Figurative flower beds, lively structured ponds and mountainous designed park parts are typical for landscape gardening by Prince Pückler.

Pückler started the first of his eight visits to Prince Charles in Glienicke only in 1853, the same year the court gardener Friedrich Schojan, who had already served Hardenberg, retired.

From the Palace the Drive, allowing a view of Coach House Courtyard, went north along Shore Ridge with the Tent as highest vantage point.

Only at the end of the 1830s the completion of the three “gorges” with the pertinent bridges on Shore Ridge and buildings like the Court Gardener's House with the adjacent water tower of the pumping station increased significantly the number of sights inside the park along the sightlines from the Drive.

Passing the Hermitage the Drive descended into the wooded parts from where in a big westward curve it ascended to the edge of a steep slope which was impressive regarding the usual regional topography.