Potsdam, Germany

Potsdam sits on the Havel River roughly 25 kilometers southwest of Berlin and serves as the capital of Brandenburg for about 180,000 residents. Its 287-hectare Sanssouci Park, laid out in 1745, contains Frederick the Great's 1747 Sanssouci Palace, the 1769 New Palace, and some 150 further buildings in a complex UNESCO listed in 1990. The 1732 Dutch Quarter preserves 150 red-brick houses, while Cecilienhof Palace hosted the 1945 Potsdam Conference attended by Truman, Churchill and Attlee, and Stalin. The 1826 Babelsberg Film Studio, the oldest large-scale studio in the world, produced Fritz Lang's Metropolis in 1927.