The Florence of the Elbe — a Baroque city that was 90% destroyed in one night in 1945 and rebuilt its skyline stone by stone, including the Frauenkirche that lay in rubble for 50 years before international donations raised it back to completion in 2005
Dresden is a city of 570,000 in the state of Saxony on the Elbe River, the capital of Saxon royal culture and one of Europe's finest Baroque capitals before February 1945. The Zwinger (1710–1728, court architect Matthäus Daniel Pöppelmann) is a Baroque palace complex housing the Old Masters Gallery (Raphael's Sistine Madonna), porcelain collection, and mathematics-physics salon. The Semperoper (1878, Gottfried Semper) is one of the world's finest opera houses. The Frauenkirche (Our Lady's Church), built 1726–1743, was a masterpiece of Baroque architecture until Allied firebombing on 13–14 Feb…
Dresden became the capital of the Margraviate of Meissen in the 13th century and was transformed into a magnificent Baroque residence under the Electors of Saxony, particularly Augustus the Strong (1694–1733) — who converted to Catholicism to become King of Poland and spent lavishly on palaces and porcelain collections. The Saxon Meissen porcelain manufactory (founded 1710, first hard-paste porcelain in Europe) gave Europe its first rival to Chinese and Japanese ware. The bombing of Dresden on 13–14 February 1945 (Operation Thunderclap) created firestorms that killed between 22,000 and 25,000…