Germany Guide
Saxony
Schloss Moritzburg
Opening time: Tours hourly: April– Oct daily 10am–5.30pm; Nov, Dec, Feb & March Tues– Sun 10am–4pm; Jan Sat & Sun 10am–4pm
Price: €6.50, combination ticket €9
Website: www.schloss-moritzburg.de
The village of Moritzburg 15km north of Dresden is another pleasure-park of Augustus the Strong, who was never going to be content with the hunting lodge he inherited from the House of Wettin. He ordered his beleaguered architect Pöppelmann to model it into a luxury Baroque palace along the lines of a French chateau. The product is pure theatre. Schloss Moritzburg rises like a wedding-cake decoration above an artificial lake spanned by a grand walkway on which stone trumpeters announce visitors. While the interior fails to live up to the promise outside, it impresses in places: the largest original decorated leather wall-hangings in the world; the Speisesaal (Dining Hall), bristling with plaster hunting trophies; and the Federzimmer, where the regent slept in a bed canopied by multicoloured feathers like a fairytale prince. The surrounding naturalistic Schlosspark is tailor-made for lazy summer days. Drift to its west end and you stumble upon the pink Fasanenschlössen (tours daily: May– Sept 10am–5.30pm; April & Oct 10am–4.30pm; €5), a dumpy Rococo lodge whose roofline nods to the fashion for chinoiserie. Surprising are the lighthouse and breakwater follies in the lake behind, where miniature frigates sailed in mock sea-battles while the princes ordered canon volleys of fireworks.
Although stripped of royal status in the constitutional reforms post-1918, the House of Wettin continued to own the palace. Prince Ernst Heinrich von Sachsen sheltered graphic artist and sculptor Käthe Kollwitz in 1944 after her house in Münster was destroyed, and the great Expressionist remained for what transpired to be her final year in lakeside Käthe Kollwitz Haus (April– Oct Mon– Fri 11am–5pm, Sat & Sun 10am–5pm; Nov– March Tues– Fri noon–4pm, Sat & Sun 11am–4pm; €3) at Meissner Strasse 7. It has displays of her ever-compelling works.
Bus #326 (towards Radeburg/Grossenhain) to Moritzburg departs from Dresden-Neustadt. More enjoyable is the journey by vintage steam train, the Lössnitzgrundbahn (www.loessnitzgrundbahn.de). At least three departures a day go from S-Bahn station Radebeul-Ost.