Mostly Saxon Christmas Markets

Made it to Dresden today, checked in, got some lunch, and went right to objective one: the Residenzschloss,

This royal palace was home to the Electors, then the Kings, of Saxony from 1547-1918. There was an old school keep built here in the Middle Ages, but the building was extended and imporved in the mid 1460s, with subsequent renovations and stylistic changes in the Sixteenth Century. After a fire in 1701, Augustus the Strong rebuilt much of the castle, including adding the collection rooms, where he kept his hoard of treasures and art. To mark the 800th anniversary of their dynasty, the Wettins renovated the schloss again in 1889, adding the Neo-Renassiance elements and modernizing it by putting in-floor heating and electricity.

Much of it was destroyed in the Dresden bombing, including the Green Vault which held the best pieces of Augustus' treasure. However, the actual collections had been stashed down the Elbe in Königstein Castle, also on our agenda over the weekend. Restoration was begun in the 1960s, and continued after Reunification, with the State Apartments being completed in 2019.

Today, the Residenzschloss houses five museums: a collection of coins, a collection of prints, drawings, and photographs, the Dresden Armory and Turkish Chamber, the Historic Green Vault, and the New Green Vault. You can also visit, as mentioned above, the state apartments of the Saxon Electors, though there was a collection of clocks and furniture in the rooms, only a parts actually looked like they might have in the Eighteenth Century. Nice, but not what I expected.

The Historic Green Vault has 3,000 odd pieces of jewelry on display. Everything is out, in front of mirrored walls. Augustus the Strong created this collection in order to demonstrate to his lucky guests just how wealthy and powerful he was. And weird quirk, you had to wear green so as not to disturb the visual ambiance. Now, you just need a timed ticket. No pictures, unfortunately.

The New Green Vault also has a heap of expensive treasures. No timed tickets and photos are permitted. Everything is locked up though. They had a lot of similar things to the Historic Vault: the elaborate vessels based around all sorts of natural objects like ostrich eggs and coconuts, ivory, ruby glass, rock crystal, elaborate pictures carved on cherry pits, and of course, the jewels.

In November 2019, thieves infiltrated the display and stole among other things, the Polish-Saxon crown jewels. The stolen items were valued at over 130 million dollars. The culprits were caught relatively quickly, as they belonged to a notorious Berlin crime family. The location of thirty-one of the items were given up by some of the suspects in the attempt to negotiate a deal. They're now back on display.Read more