Today’s morning drive was relatively short from Leipzig to Dresden. We spent most of the day there, touring and with free time.
As usual, we met local guides who gave us an excellent introduction to their city. Dresden has miraculously recovered from the fire bombing that virtually destroyed the city at the end of WWII. Much work still continues. Many of the rebuilt buildings use stones from the bombed buildings to be rebuilt, supplementing those with new stone of the same type. During the Soviet years, churches were not allowed to be rebuilt, and almost all construction was in modern (for the 50’s & 60’s) style. The last twenty years have seen the most dramatic reconstruction.
Our tour started at the Jewish synagogue, a modern building with walls that are not straight. From there we walked to what will be the modern art museum when it opens later this year. Next to that is the art school of Dresden. Both of these buildings are reconstructions of bombed out buildings.
A prime example of the reconstruction with old materials is the Frauenkirche, which was rebuilt to match the original as much as possible. The old and new stones are mixed; the old well blackened with age, and the new very light. The new will match the old in about ten years or so. This is St Mary’s, or The Church of Our Lady, which was a large Roman Catholic church before the Reformation, but then became the main Protestant/Lutheran church in the city. The interior is clearly late Baroque, or maybe even rococo. It is a beautiful church.
On our way through the city, we visited both old style and modern buildings. At one point we passed a mosaic mural of the ruling family of Saxony, made with 24,000 Meissen ceramic tiles. It is about 300 meters long. Rather impressive! This brought us to the Hof-Kirche, the Roman Catholic cathedral, built by the ruling family next to their palace. Both are impressive buildings. The cathedral has a Silbermann organ from the 18th century, which survived the fire bombing because it was removed from the church and stored in a safe place.
The final stop on the walking tour was the Zwinger, the palace complex for the ruling family for more than 800 years. It is now a series of museums. We ate lunch at an outdoor café here. We then had about two hours for free time before we got back on the bus.
We returned to some of the walking tour sites, and went to a shopping mall. We found a store that specialized in Christmas items and bought a new Nativity (laser cut wood with a tea light) and some tree light ornaments. The next stop was the Meissen porcelain outlet store. We had walked by the main store, but didn’t even go in after seeing the prices in the window displays. At the outlet, we did buy one small piece off the seconds table.
We left Dresden and drove to Prague. When we crossed the border into the Czech Republic (which we didn’t even notice on the highway!) we added another country to our list. We are on the outskirts of Prague in a very large hotel. Tomorrow we will explore Praha (Prague).
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