With the founding of the local towns in the 12th and 13th centuries, these were mostly in the hands of noble families who had received the land as fiefs from the Brandenburg Electors and built their knight's seats here, where they also sold their possessions very often or awarded as a pledge ,

1662 acquired Countess Dohna from the house Holland-Brederode Niederschönhausen and Pankow and had 1664 on the Niederschönhausener knight's seat built a representative dwelling house in the Dutch style. This two-storey "petit palais" represents the core of today's Schloss Schönhausen.

Elector Friedrich III. (1657-1713, Elector from 1688), who had found favor with the estate at a young age, was able to acquire it, including both villages, in 1691 from the widow of the Oberhof marshal Joachim Ernst von Grumbkow for 16,000 talers. For the administration of the villages Friedrich III. the office Niederschönhausen, which had its seat in Blankenfelde. In the following two years he had the small mansion reworked by Johann Arnold Nehring.

Here, in August 1700, the elector prepared with the members of the Secret Cabinet the last steps of his coronation to the King in Prussia, which he himself undertook on 18 January 1701 in Königsberg. Then, under the direction of the court architect JF Eosander von Göthe, a new, more splendid rebuilding and extension of the castle to the royal summer residence began, surrounded by a garden designed in the style of the French Baroque. After the King's death, the park and castle fell into a slumber. His son, Friedrich Wilhelm I, called Soldier King, had little sense of such pleasure locks. He leased parts of the site, and officials lived in the castle.

Frederick II (1712-1786) donated the castle after his accession in 1740 to his wife Elisabeth Christine von Braunschweig-Bevern (1715-1797), who chose it as their summer residence. Here the queen gave receptions, court and garden festivals and arranged weddings several times for villagers. 1753 was the "Queen Plantation", the later Schönholz, first as a garden and mulberry plantation.

In 1763 Elisabeth Christine had 12 colonists settle there, mainly Leineweber and Raschmacher (Wollweber) from Saxony and Thuringia. A year later, after devastation by Russian troops, reconstructions and extensions to the castle by Jan Bouman d. Ä., Whereby it received approximately its today's form and the Rokoko equipment. After the death of the queen, the castle had a miserable existence. Only temporarily was it inhabited by relatives and guests of the Hohenzollern. Finally, it served as furniture and picture storage.

Since 1920 in Prussian state possession, Schloß Schönhausen was opened to the public and used by various art associations for exhibitions, in the Nazi era also by the Reichskunstkammer.

Immediately after the end of the war, a Pankow artists' initiative was founded, which, after repairing the roof and windows in September 1945, opened a first art exhibition. Shortly thereafter, the intact building was confiscated by the Soviet Military Administration and used first as an officer's casino, then as a school and boarding school for Soviet students. From then on it was closed to the public, including the inner castle park.

It served from 1949 to 1960 as the official residence of the president of the GDR, Wilhelm Pieck, and became afterwards guesthouse of the government. Among the last guests were Mikhail Gorbachev and his wife Raissa in October 1989. Schoenhausen became the center of public interest in the autumn of 1989, when the "Zentrale Runde Tisch" - the initiative of progressive forces for the democratization of the GDR - met in the congress hall / adjoining building , There, too, the "two plus four" talks took place in preparation for the unification of the two German states.