Tegel Castle

Tegel Palace (also Humboldt Palace) is located in the Tegel district of Berlin, in the Reinickendorf borough, and is the most significant architectural monument in the district. The palace park borders the northern shore of Lake Tegel. Today, the Heinz family lives in the palace. A Humboldt Museum is located within the palace.

Originally built in 1558 as a Renaissance manor house, it was converted into a hunting lodge at the behest of Elector Frederick William of Brandenburg. As part of the Tegel estate, the palace passed to the Humboldt family in 1766 through marriage. Tegel Palace became the family seat of the Humboldts. Alexander and Wilhelm von Humboldt also lived here for many years. After the death of his mother Marie-Elisabeth von Humboldt, Wilhelm von Humboldt took over the estate in 1797. He had the palace redesigned by Karl Friedrich Schinkel in the Neoclassical style from 1820 to 1824. Later, Wilhelm von Humboldt's daughter Gabriele inherited the estate. She was married to the Prussian Foreign Minister Heinrich von Bülow. After Gabriele von Bülow's death, the Tegel property passed into the hands of her daughter Constanze von Heinz, whose descendants still inhabit the house today.

The park was originally laid out between 1777 and 1789 by the Humboldts' tutor, Gottlob Johann Christian Kunth. From 1802, its design was further developed by Wilhelm von Humboldt. The often-cited authorship by Peter Joseph Lenné has proven to be a false attribution.

The palace park also contains the Humboldt family burial site, created by Schinkel in 1829, where Alexander and Wilhelm von Humboldt also found their final resting place. The brothers' mother had already established a family crypt for herself and her husbands in the Falkenberg village church. In 1983, the palace park was placed under monument protection. On its western side, near Lake Tegel, stands an allegedly 800-year-old oak tree, the "Dicke Marie" (Fat Marie), as it was named by the Humboldt brothers after their cook.