Germany Guide
Saxony
The Frauenkirche
Address: Neumarkt
No monument is so potent a metaphor of reborn Dresden as the Frauenkirche. The church on Neumarkt was designed both as Germany's largest Protestant church and a piece of one-upmanship over the nearby Catholic Hofkirche by a town architect, Georg Bähr, and paid for almost entirely by public donation. Canaletto set up his easel wherever he could conspire to feature its landmark bell-like cupola, and the church was considered the pinnacle achievement of Protestant Baroque. Shattered by the 1945 raid, it lay in a heap of rubble piled against two fire-blackened towers as a communist memorial – a salute to the city's dead and an accusatory statement of the destruction wrought by the perfidious West. Small wonder it became a focus of silent peaceful protest during the Wende, when candles were placed amid the rubble. Following heated debate, the council voted on a rebuild in 1991, and a year ahead of schedule, at 10am on October 30, 2005, with some of the €180 million cost funded by British and American associations, the bells rang over a crowd of thousands to celebrate the re-consecration.
As locals are keen to point out, this is less a new church than a return of the old – its beautifully balanced structure is faithful to the original plans and its café-au-lait sandstone is freckled with original fire-blackened blocks. Within what is probably the busiest church in Saxony, delicately marbled galleries crammed Escher-esque into the lantern cupola fight a losing battle for attention with the explosion of gilt that is the high altar depicting Jesus in the olive grove, jigsawed together from two thousand original pieces. The original twisted crucifix dug out from the rubble is displayed by the exit door. Poignantly, the cross of the new church was produced by a silversmith from Coventry whose father was a bomber pilot in the 1945 raid. A separate entrance at the rear provides access to the tower (daily 10am–1pm & 2–6pm, till 4pm Nov– March; €8) whose windy balcony provides unrivalled views over the city and river.