The first weekend was my trip to Dresden.  My pronunciation of “Dresden” was a source of endless entertainment for my host family.  Our first stop in the city was the famous and thrice built Semper Operhaus in the old city.  However it didn’t seem appropriate to call this the “old city” since it had all been firebombed to nothing and rebuild in the 50s and on.  The opera house was beautiful but not quite as remarkable as I had hoped.  The palace and surrounding building caught my eye.  I could distinguish the old sections from where it was rebuilt by the colors, the old sandstone was black and the copper roofs were green, from oxidization but the new sections were light but otherwise indistinguishable.  According to our guide all the new sandstone construction will be darkened the same as the old in another ten years.   In one section of the palace I found a sign that was somewhat unsettling.  It was a plaque detailing the reconstruction of the palace and offhandedly mentioned the 100,000 civilians that were killed in the bombings by the allies who “liberated the city” as if they were grateful out of shame for of the collateral damage.  More interestingly the sign must have been erected recently since it was in English and Dresden was in the DDR.

Around the district every building seemed to be a completely different style of architecture depending on what organization or ruler built each building and when it was built within even a couple years, for example the opera house is very typical baroque but the ticket office for it is a Roman style building, Or a hotel that had been repeatedly expanded and slightly different each time, but with one extremely ornate section that stands out and was the home to one of the king’s mistresses.

I got the overall impression that Dresden used it’s nearly blank slate to idealize this part of the city as well as preserve it.  Most of the royal buildings and fortifications are now museums of all kinds and libraries when they were essentially ornate government and military structures. Along with separating the modern factories from the historical buildings anything new must have a 1800s style façade.

Semper Operhaus

Palace

View from the defensive wall along the river Elbe, now a row of museums.