Upcoming exhibitions

The now-legendary cityscape of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Dresden survives not only in countless artistic depictions and written accounts, but also in architectural drawings. The plan collection of the State Office for Monument Preservation Saxony ranks among the most important architectural collections in Dresden. Its holdings cover almost all the court buildings of the electoral and later royal capital – first and foremost the Royal Palace and its ancillary buildings – as well as those throughout the former Electorate. The collection also documents municipal and civic building projects, which required approval from the court building authorities, and the palaces and gardens of the nobility, who frequently engaged court architects for their own commissions.

Bringing together a selection of the collection's finest and most representative drawings for the first time in this form, the exhibition unfolds like a stroll through Dresden. In the first gallery, visitors set out from the Royal Palace to explore the city’s most important buildings: the Zwinger, the Catholic Church of the Royal Court (Hofkirche), the Frauenkirche, the Kreuzkirche, the most celebrated palaces, and the Opera House and Picture Gallery. The second gallery turns to buildings beyond the Old Town: the Augustus Bridge, the Japanese Palace, a number of well-known gardens and secondary residences, among them the Great Garden, the Brühl Garden in the Friedrichstadt, Pillnitz Palace, Hubertusburg Palace, and Königstein Fortress. The exhibition’s final chapter links Dresden with Berlin, revealing the architectural connections between the two capitals in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

The designs on display span the work of Matthäus Daniel Pöppelmann, George Bähr, Zacharias Longuelune, Johann Christoph Knöffel, Gaetano Chiaveri, Julius Heinrich Schwarze and Gottfried Semper, together forming a unique portrait of royal Dresden.

Image: Matthäus Daniel Pöppelmann: Dresden, Zwinger, cross-section of the pavilions along the walls with a view of the Wall Pavilion, before 1729 (detail); Landesamt für Denkmalpflege Sachsen

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