Dresden Old Market to the Elbe

Today I took A Streetcar Named Coshutz down to the Auldtstadt, the "Old Town". It is literally downhill because the Auldtstadt is on the river. The "New Town" is only from the latter part of the 16th century, so you can see it is quite new. I've uploaded the first part of a walk from the Old Market and Town Hall towards the river and ending at the Hauptkirch.

Here is the clock tower of the Town Hall. It shows the distinctive dark staining of the sandstone quarried here. If there aren't town colors, they should be black and gold.

In the basement of any self respecting Town Hall is a Ratskeller. Dresden is no exception. Notice the expression on the donkey's face. I've felt like that myself sometimes.

There's still a little snow on the flowers. Last night was an unseasonably hard freeze (about -4 centigrade) and it killed a lot of flowers.

Here's a reconstructed church facing on the Old Market square. Notice the mix of new and old sandstone. Of course, Dresden was firebombed in the final days of WWII, destroying the center of the town. These buildings have mostly been rebuilt, many from their original sandstone blocks. But new blocks needed to be quarried. The black color of the blocks is not from the firebombing, it is a natural weathering of this type of sandstone.

Turning around and facing towards the river across the Old Market square you can see the clocktower of the Prince's palace.

Parts of the palace are still under reconstruction. In fact there is massive reconstruction everywhere you look downtown. People are hoping to have the city ready for its 500th birthday in 2006.

Here is a view of the palace stables. Yes, those are the stables. And yes, that is Meissen porcelain covering the whole wall. You know, it's easier to keep clean that way.

Here's the outside of the palace stables. That is a giant mosaic of Meissen porcelain depicting all of the rulers of Saxony up until the latter part of the 19th century.

On the left is prince's palace and on the right is the Catholic Church. Catholic Church? Isn't this strongly protestant Saxony? Yes, but Augustus the Strong needed to convert to Catholicism so that he could become King of Poland. So he did, built himself a cathedral, and of course built a bridge to it so he wouldn't need to walk among the commoners on the way to mass.

There are several dozen gigantic statues on the top of the Hauptkirch. Here you see two, one that is old and one that has been newly sculpted to match the original destroyed in the war.