Great Train Journey - Dresden: Part 3 (14 pics)

Another of the really cool buildings I visited in Dresden was the Zwinger Palace.  This was the garden, exhibition gallery, and festival area of the Dresden Court of Augustus the Strong.  Like nearly everything else in the city, it was destroyed in the Allied fire-bombing of Dresden in 1945.  Unlike the Frauenkirche, the citizens of Dresden voted to rebuild the Zwinger after the war while still part of the GDR.

Unfortunately, nearly all of the Zwinger interior is now made up of museums, and I really wasn't in the mood to go to museums.  But there are a couple of very interesting parts of the exterior of the building.  So took pictures of those as I wandered around.

In the middle of the Zwinger is a set of gardens and fountains.

This pavilion gives some idea of the level of decoration of the building exterior.  What's incredible is that most of the figures you see on the buildings and as small statues are unique.  They may be similar, but from what I could see they nearly all have slightly different faces, or poses, or other differences.

 This fountain area is one of the areas you can access (on the upper levels) without having to pay for access to the museums.  It is surrounded on three sides by levels that overlook the fountains, and there is unique statuary all around. 
 

 Like this.

And this.

And these.

 And this.

 And this.

Around the main garden area, a lot of the buildings have these satyr motifs under each window.  To give you an example of how each design is unique, I grabbed pictures of several of the satyr's so that you can see how they differ.

And that's it for the Zwinger.   I hope you enjoyed the pictures.  Even though, as always, I'm just scratching the surface of what's there.