Potsdam’s Dutch Quarter was built for people who never came. The city sat on sand and swamp, and King Frederick William I, who had fallen for Holland as a young prince, wanted Dutch engineers to drain it. In 1732 he ordered up a small Netherlands to tempt them. 134 red-brick houses, designed by the Dutch architect Jan Bouman. The drained water collected in a basin, now Bassinplatz.

The Dutch, with perfectly good lives at home, stayed there. Prussians and French artists and soldiers moved in instead, and the houses, run down but standing in East German times, were restored after reunification. Bouman’s own house is now a small museum.

VoiceMap’s self-guided audio tour of Baroque Potsdam walks you through the quarter’s four blocks, explains why the Dutch never arrived, and traces Bouman’s hand from here to the Palace Barberini.