The Romans called their monumental Pantheon “La Rotonda” because of its interior. It's laid out so that a huge roofed sphere with a diameter of more than 43 metres could fit inside it. To this day the building is considered one of the outstanding examples of ancient architecture. Until the Industrial Revolution it had the world's biggest dome, and it's one of the best-preserved structures from Roman antiquity. First erected as a temple in the second century AD on the Roman Campus Martius, it was consecrated as a Christian church in the seventh century.

The Potsdam church modelled on this icon of ancient architecture was designed by the royal architect Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff in 1751. Construction was in the hands of Jan Boumann. The conversion of a temple for all the gods into a church fit well with Frederick's enlightened views. With it he underlined that in his Prussia, people should all seek heaven in their own fashion.

It's the only church Frederick the Great had built in Potsdam – his gift to the French Protestant community, with which he maintained close ties. But the building is no affirmation of faith on Frederick's part. Sober economic considerations were his motive: the King wanted to bind the Huguenot religious refugees more closely to Prussia: "They helped repopulate our desolate towns and provided the factories we lacked".