Dresden
Capital Of Saxony And The Baroque Residence City Rebuilt After The Raids Of February 1945; The Frauenkirche, The Zwinger, The Semperoper And The Green Vault Treasury · Dresden, Saxony
Dresden is the capital of Saxony, a baroque residence city on a bend of the Elbe built up by the Saxon electors in the eighteenth century. On the night of 13 to 14 February 1945 and in raids over the following day, British and American bombers destroyed the old town; the death toll was put by the city's own commission of historians at roughly 25,000. What a visitor walks through now is therefore reconstruction of varying age: the Zwinger and the Semperoper were rebuilt under the GDR, the Frauenkirche only between 1994 and 2005, partly from stone sorted out of its own rubble. Within a few hundred metres sit the Zwinger with the Old Masters gallery and its Sistine Madonna, the Residenzschloss with the Green Vault treasury in two parts, the Fuerstenzug tile mural, the Bruehlsche Terrasse above the river and the Semperoper. The Neustadt across the water, less flattened and never prettified, is where people actually go out. The Dresden Elbe Valley was a UNESCO World Heritage Site from 2004 until it was removed from the list in 2009 over a new road bridge.
Dresden Altstadt on the south bank of the Elbe: the Frauenkirche, the Zwinger, the Semperoper, the Residenzschloss and the Bruehlsche Terrasse, Dresden, Saxony, Germany
The Altstadt squares, the Zwinger courtyard, the Fuerstenzug and the Bruehlsche Terrasse are open air and free at any hour. The state art collections, including the Zwinger galleries and the Residenzschloss, normally close on Mondays as most German state museums do, with last admission about half an hour to an hour before closing - confirm. The Historic Green Vault admits fixed numbers on timed tickets only and the day's slots are usually gone by mid-morning in season. The Frauenkirche opens daily for visitors but closes the nave to sightseeing during services and concerts; the dome climb is ticketed with an early last entry. Semperoper tours run around rehearsals and are cancelled at short notice.