Schinkel was born in Neuruppin, Brandenburg. When he was six, his father died in Neuruppin's disastrous fire. He became a student of architect Friedrich Gilly (1772–1800) (the two became close friends) and his father, David Gilly, in Berlin. He made a trip to Italy in 1805. Then he started to earn his living as a painter.He worked for the stage and created in 1816 a star-spangled backdrop for the appearance of the "Königin der Nacht" in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's opera "The Magic Flute". When he saw Caspar David Friedrich's painting "Wanderer above the Sea of Fog" at the 1810 Berlin art exhibition he decided that he would never reach such mastery of painting and turned to architecture. After Napoleon's defeat, Schinkel worked at the Prussian Building Commission. In this position, he was not only responsible for reshaping the city of Berlin into a representative capital for Prussia, but also had to work projects in the expanded Prussian territories from the Rhineland in the west to Königsberg in the east.