While in office, the German president makes his or her temporary home in this snowy white neoclassical palace on the edge of the Tiergarten. Built in 1785 by Philipp Daniel Boumann for the youngest brother of Frederick the Great, it became a school under Kaiser Wilhelm II and a museum of ethnology under the Nazis.
The president's staff hits their desks in the Bundespräsidialamt (Office of the Federal President), a modern oval building south of the palace.