New Chambers (Sanssouci)

The real alteration occurred in the interior, where seven guest rooms and two ballrooms were created. The building is a highpoint of the late style of Frederician Rococo, even though the Neoclassical style was already largely set as the prevailing taste of the period. The halls were designed by Johann Christian Hoppenhaupt.[1]

The guest rooms were decorated differently with lacquered, painted, or inlaid cabinets, whose costly inlays of native woods decorated the entire wall from the ceiling to the floor.

For paintings, the guest rooms have views of Potsdam, which document the town's design under Frederick the Great and were specially commissioned for the guesthouse by the king.

View from the Jasper Room towards the Ovid Gallery

In the middle of the building, under the cupola, lies the largest room, the Jasper Room. The ballroom's walls are decorated with red jasper and grey Silesian marble. The same colors are found in the floor design. The ceiling painting Venus mit ihrem Gefolge (Venus with her Retinue) was created by Johann Christoph Frisch. Decorated panels from both antiquity and the 18th century were attached to the background of red jasper.[1]

The second, large ballroom, located in the eastern part of the New Chambers is the Ovid Gallery, decorated in the style of French mirrored rooms.

On the long side of the room is a mirror stretching almost to the ceiling, across from which, on the garden side, are French doors.

Frederick asked for the walls to be decorated with gilded reliefs of the liaisons of the ancient gods, which had been told of by the Roman poet Ovid in his Metamorphoses. The room's rich decoration comes from the workshop of the sculptors and brothers Johann David Räntz and Johann Lorentz Wilhelm Räntz.[1]