Elegant Elbe: Dresden c (5/27/2018)

Sunday, May 27, 2018 (continued)
After the Royal Palace, we continued walking through Dresden.

Palace of Culture/Kulturpalast (1962-1969, ) was to be the centerpiece of
a new Socialist town center in Dresden, which never materialized;
in 2017 renovation was completed to make it the home of the
Dresdener Philharmonie and a city library

Palace of Culture mural titled Way of the Red Flag, by Gerhard Bondzin

A young street musician

The long corridor/Langer Gang (1568-1591, rebuilt
1957-1984) on the left connected the Royal Palace
to the stables, fronting the stable yard

The two pillars in the stable yard are ring-jousting columns, used during the tournament exercise where one attempts to put the point of his lance through a ring suspended between the pillars, while on horseback.

The Tuscan columns are topped by coats of arms
of countries ruled by the Wettin dynasty, and
sculptures of hunt animal heads

The other stable yard wall has sgraffito,
making the rectangular blocks look three-dimensional (KSS)

Close-up of the sgraffito (KSS)

The little girl slowly approached the living statues

The outer wall of the long corridor has the 102 m/335' long mural
titled Procession of Princes/Fürstenzug (1870-1876, by Wilhelm Walther,
replaced in 1906-1907 with 23,000 Meissen tiles; survived World War II)

The Procession of Princes shows the rulers of the House of Wettin, starting with Konrad the Great who ruled from 1127-1156, and ending with Friedrich Augustus III who ruled from 1904-1918.

We started at the tail end, where the very last face
belonged to the artist, Wilhelm Walther

August II (the Strong) and August III
are both on horseback, and the horse of
Augustus the Strong stomps on a rose,
a symbol of Martin Luther and Protestants

Three servants

The beginning of the Procession of Princes, led by a herald,
seven musicians and three flag bearers

Another living statue - that guy did not move (the dog is stuffed)!

The former royal stables (1586-1590, by Paul Buchner, rebuilt 1950-1960)
is now the Johanneum that houses the Dresden Transport Museum

Church of Our Lady/Frauenkirche (1726-1743,
by George Bähr) was built as a Lutheran church
to replace a Catholic church they had taken over
during the Reformation

Frauenkirche was destroyed in World War II, and the ruins were left as a memorial. After Reunification, from 1994-2005, the church was reconstructed, using original building materials where possible. We were told that the Elbe sandstone "naturally" blackens when exposed to air or as it weathers, and that the blackness does not come from smoke or pollution. Thus, when you see the black stones in the building, they are the original old stones. Over time, the new stones will also blacken. Yet many sources still state that the stones in Dresden are blackened due to the firestorm after the bombing in 1945.

Statue (1885, by Ernst Rietschel and
Adolf von Donndorf; survived World War II)
of Martin Luther, theologian and reformer, who is
holding the Bible he translated into German

Statue (1861-1866, by Ernst Julius Hähnel) of
Friedrich August II holding in his right hand the
constitution of 1831, with allegorical figures of Faith
(with cross and bible), Wisdom (with book), Strength
(in armor, with club), and Justice (with sword)

Jehovah's Witnesses

A chunk of the Frauenkirche dome
that has been left where it fell

The back of the Academy of Fine Arts, with its dome
that is nicknamed the "lemon juicer"

Great Mourning Man/Großer Trauernder
Mann (1979 to 1983, by Wieland Förster)
is dedicated to the victims of
13 February 1945 in Dresden (KSS)

Statuary in a display storeroom/Schaudepot of the Albertinum

Covered courtyard of the Albertinum

We have seen several confiseries with these
gelatin raspberry pastries (KSS)

New Synagogue (2001, by Rena
Wandel-Hoefer and Wolfgang Lorch), built on the site of
the Semper Synagogue (1839–1840, by Gottfried Semper),
which was destroyed in 1938, during the Kristallnacht

Conservation area on the bank of the Elbe River

Still fishing near the Viking Astrild

We were returned to the ship by our guide, and it was time for lunch.
Next: Dresden d.