About this place
For almost four hundred years the Residenzschloss was the seat of the electors and kings of Saxony, the powerful Albertine line of the House of Wettin who also wore the crown of Poland. Begun as a Romanesque keep around 1200 and rebuilt again and again through Renaissance, Baroque and Neo-Renaissance fashions, the palace grew into one of the oldest and most layered buildings in Dresden. Under Augustus the Strong it reached its glittering peak, and in 1723 he transformed a suite of chambers into the Green Vault, the opulent treasury that still holds the largest collection of princely riches in Europe. Gutted to a roofless shell in the firestorm of 1945, the castle has been patiently pieced back together and now shelters some of Saxony's greatest museums behind its restored facades.
Key facts
- 100.27 meters — Height of the Hausmannsturm, the palace watchtower that was the tallest tower in the city until 1945
- 1723 year — Augustus the Strong founded the Green Vault treasury inside the castle, one of the oldest museums in Europe
- 2019 year — Thieves broke into the Green Vault in a spectacular jewel heist, seizing diamond-studded treasures
📍 Taschenberg 2, 01067, Dresden