‘Final spurt’: decades-long rebuilding of Dresden’s Royal Palace nears completion – The Art Newspaper

It took around four centuries, starting in the 1540s, for Dresden’s Royal Palace, the Residenzschloss, to achieve its monumental fusion of Renaissance and Baroque styles. Then, on the night of 13 February 1945, massive Allied bombing reduced it to a burnt-out shell. A perennial ruin for most of the history of the German Democratic Republic, the palace did not officially begin its post-war reconstruction until 1985. After a period of slow but crucial progress in the final years of communist rule, and then more assuredly in the years following German reunification, the €400m project nears its completion, starting this autumn.

A prime exhibition venue of the Staatliche Kunstsammlung Dresden (SKD), the Saxon palace now houses some of Germany’s most prestigious collections, including the jewels and precious objects of the Grünes Gewölbe; works on paper in the Kupferstich-Kabinett; and the ceremonial armour, firearms and ornate riding gear of the Rüstkammer, a leading trove of its kind.

Phased completion

The “final spurt”—as the Free State of Saxony calls this last phase—is getting underway this month, with a new installation in the palace’s one-time picture galleries. Then in November work is due to finish up in the rebuilt Schlosskapelle, the palace’s original Protestant chapel, followed in early 2026 with the inauguration of an elaborate Rüstkammer installation in the rebuilt ballroom and grand consultation chamber. In 2027 the Grosser Schlosshof, the complex’s elaborately decorated main courtyard, will be ready after some three decades of work, and finally a new exhibit in the ground floor’s Gothic Hall, the oldest part of the complex, will chronicle the history of the palace itself.

The Residenzschloss has gone through several incarnations, from fortified castle to Baroque showpiece, reflecting the fortunes of the House of Wettin, the prince-electors, later kings, of Saxony. But this newest version is arguably rooted in an overlooked aspect of East Germany’s communist era: a wellspring of Saxon patriotism that marked its final decades. This not only saved the palace remnants from demolition—a fate that befell the Hohenzollern city palace in East Berlin—but resulted in an ambitious goal to expertly revive notable elements all but invisible for centuries.

The Grosser Schlosshof’s graffito decoration and balcony frescoes date to the 16th century but were damaged in an early 18th-century fire. When planning began in the 1980s, it was decided to bring them all back, even though there were only scant traces by the early 20th century. The 16th-century chapel, once a centre of Lutheranism, fell into disuse after the Wettins converted to Catholicism in the late 17th century; by the mid 18th century, it had been broken up and transformed, set to become everything from storage space to offices. Now, restorers have brought back the original vaulted ceiling, with only a few surviving depictions, like a 1670s copperplate print, to guide them. Holger Krause, an engineer with the Saxon government entity overseeing the palace project, likes to stress that he is not working on a reconstruction but an interpretive “restaging” of what was there before the war.

The SKD’s holdings are indelibly marked by the fanciful Baroque sensibility of Augustus the Strong (1670-1733), the Saxon Elector turned Polish king, whose costumed festivals, countless processions, and elaborate ornaments became the basis of several collections. For the SKD’s general director Bernd Ebert, the German art historian who arrived from Munich this spring to steward this final phase of palace installations, elements like the recovered courtyard decorations and new chapel ceiling are actually in keeping with Dresden’s own court traditions. “In a way, they are fantasies,” he concedes, but Dresden’s cultural prestige “started out as a fantasy”.

Rare animal trappings

The final spurt is facilitating a new round of conservation treatments and rediscoveries. This month’s unveiling of the reinstalled picture galleries will highlight seldom-seen Baroque-era trappings for animals, including a Rüstkammer gilded dog collar, a blingy mid-18th-century bauble that could double these days as a luxurious human choker. An installation called Masks and Crowns, planned for early 2026 and recalling the Saxon electors’ proclivity for gaudy festivals, will display fine sleigh gear made for a horse. Marked by a red velvet covering stitched with gold and silver wire, that gear is also, it turns out, a kind of musical instrument. Used in a winter procession on the occasion of the 1719 betrothal of Augustus the Strong’s son to the daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor, it is undergoing a treatment that has revealed its 400-odd bells can play several different notes.

Down in the palace’s Grünes Gewölbe—still recovering pieces from a headline-grabbing 2019 theft—conservators have learned that its Baroque silver objects were once typically covered up with paint, and research into objects comprising semi-precious stones has resulted in numerous re-categorisations, following examinations by scientists from Saxony’s Freiberg University of Mining and Technology. While back up in the Propositionssaal, the chamber being readied for Masks and Crowns, restorers are reinstalling the room’s original 19th-century gilded-brass chandeliers, salvaged from the rubble after the war and due to be shown for the first time since.

The completion of the Residenz­schloss also feels like a final chapter in the rebuilding of the city’s historic centre, which was nearly obliterated in the war. A matter of decades ago, the 15-minute walk from the Zwinger, Augustus the Strong’s Baroque complex displaying the SKD’s porcelain collection, past the palace and on to the Albertinum, a 19th-century museum now housing Romantic and Modern art, would have been a trip through a wasteland. Now, nearly the whole of the urban fabric has been filled in.

Marius Winzeler, the Swiss art historian who took over the directorship of the Grünes Gewölbe and Rüstkammer in 2021, first visited Dresden as a teenager in the 1980s. “I was so fascinated by the destroyed city,” he recalls, “because everything in Switzerland is so perfect.” But that version of Dresden has been consigned to history. “It’s a new city,” he says, adding, “A new old city.”