Germany Guide
Saxony
The Zwinger
The Zwinger complex of buildings owes its name to an early "outer bailey" that guarded the Residenzschloss; thereafter the similarity ends. The great glory of Baroque Dresden, it was conceived as an alfresco ballroom for court high jinks by Augustus the Strong, who entrusted the commission to architect Matthäus Daniel Pöppelmann and sculptor Balthasar Permoser. The duo came up with one of the prize buildings of Germany. While the symmetrical layout of lawns and fountains is a paean to the order of the Age of Reason, the Zwinger courtyard is Baroque at its most playful. A balustraded one-storey wing broken by a gateway capped by the Polish Crown runs to dumpy corner pavilions, while at either end are lozenge-shaped ceremonial gateways – the eastern Glockenspielpavillon with a peal of forty Meissen china bells, and the Wallpavillon opposite, exuberant with heraldic froth and topped by a statue of Augustus carrying the world on his shoulders as Hercules. To the structure Permoser adds a sculptural carnival: festive putti, bare-breasted nymphs and satyrs who leer as caryatids. The only grouch in the party is a workmanlike north wing added in the mid-1800s to finally close the courtyard after work had stalled through lack of funds. It's worth circling the complex on the terrace to see it at its best, accessed via a stairway that zigzags within the Wallpavillon, behind which is the Nymphenbad fountain, an enchanting sunken nook whose nymphs are modelled on Tuscan Roman originals.