While the city of Potsdam is most famous for its world heritage sites, the castles of Sanssouci and Babelsberg, amongst others, it also has a lot of local parks of which the Friendship Island (Freundschaftsinsel in German) is definitely the most popular one. The island is named after a restaurant (at the location of the main coordinates) that has been in this place for more than 150 years.
Originally just an alluvial sand island in the Havel river, the island was first populated by local farmers and ship builders in the 19th century. In 1938, gardener and botanist Karl Foerster started creating a botanical garden on the island which opened in 1941. Unfortunately all his original work was destroyed just four years later in one of the last battles of World War II. After the war, the island was scattered with trenches while local citizen planted vegetables to survive the harsh past-war conditions.
Starting in 1951, the island was turned into a park again and today it is not only one of Potsdam’s most popular inner city parks but also host to the state’s largest collection of modern sculptures and Germany’s largest garden of perennial plants.