Leaving Belin behind, our idea was to go straight to Prague, but we decided to stop in Dresden, that in spite of being destroyed during the WW2, it was rebuilt maintaining its baroque style. What to do in one day in Dresden.
Full of Berlin and with only 24 hours to do a stop between the german capital and Prague, we went 200 km south to Dresden, capital of the Saxony state. The city, known as the “Florence on Elbe” because of its cultural heritage and sadly famous for being razed during the WW2, totally blew up our minds
How did we get there? We bought bus tickets on www.busbud.com, at great fare and the service was excellent, on time and the bus was very clean. We recommend this platform that sells bus tickets from different companies to several places in Europe.
Once in Dresden, we did the check in at Motel One Zwinger, very near the rebuilt old quarter. We arrived very early, and at that moment there was only one double room available, so we left our things in the room and went to a coffee shop to have some breakfast: latte plus chocolate cake are the perfect combination.
It was cold and drizzling. In normal circumstances, we would have spent the day eating and watching the rain from the window, but there was no time to lose so we began by visiting the Zwinger (1711), an imponent baroque building, that received us with a violinist playing “O Sole Mio”. It was impossible not to leave without giving her a tip. The palace, that used to be a place for great partys of the high society, today holds many art expositions, from ceramic to the paintings gallery of the ancient masters, Tiziano, Rafale, El Greco, Rubens, and more.
One of the pearls is “The Procession of Princes”, the largest porcelain mosaic in the world (101 mts), made with 24 thousand tiles. The curious fact is that it survived the 1945 bombing. The good thing about the Altstadt (old quarter in german) is that everything is very near and you can go from one place to the other on foot.
The Frauenkirche, Church of Our Lady, is one of the many other symbols of Dresden. It was destroyed during the WW2 and consecrated again in 2005. Another splurge of baroque is the Hofkirche or Cathedral Sanctissimae Trinitatis (1738-1754). Leaving behind the religious buildings, we walk to the Royal Palace which actually holds a museum complex.
Cathedral Sanctissimae Trinitatis |
Church of Our Lady |
Royal Palace |
Like most of the emblematic european cities, Dresden has its Opera House. Architecturally, it combines three styles: Early Renaissance, Baroque and Classical Greek. There works of Wagner and Strauss were released.
At the other side of the Elbe it´s the Neustadt quarter. We went from watching carriages in seek of tourists at the old quarter, to electric cars in the new part of the city. In our way, we found the golden statue of August The Strong, that indicates the way into the New Town. We wandered around until we found the Kunsthofpassage, a passage that links two main streets of this trendy quarter. There are five themed courtyards of different character full of restaurants and cafes, galleries and shops. What caught our attention was the facade of one of the buildings, full of pipes that make music out of rain drops.
We knew that it would be impossible to make a complete tour around Dresden in 24 hours, however we still decided that we wanted to enjoy it as much as we could. It´s the same feeling you get when you walk into a fantastic party and find out that it finishes in a couple of hours. With a large to-do list, we said goodbye to Dresden watching the snow falling and waiting for the taxi to take us to the bus stop to go to Prague. It was fast but it was totally worthy!
We recommend you to read this post about day trips from Munich