September 9, 2024

September 9, 2024

We woke up to rain and cool weather in Dresden, Germany. Fall is overdue, but I was hoping for a gradual change.

Last night we made a timed reservation for the Historic Green Vault. It is the premier attraction in the Royal Palace Museum. This set of highly decorated rooms contains the treasury of the Saxon Kings. The timed entry through air-locks is partly to control crowds and partly for security. The treasury has had thefts over the years, most recently in 2019. This museum is a two-fer as the room settings are also of interest.

The Green Vault treasury objects are a little overwhelming. The Saxon rulers clearly had too much money and too much time on their hands. They commissioned drinking glasses and decorations out of every conceivable material you could imagine. There is an entire room of amber, another of ivory, and other rooms with objects crafted from rock crystal, ostrich eggs, coconuts, and seashells. They are all ornamented with diamonds, gems, silver and gold. I can possibly see getting one of each, but these Saxons bought dozens and dozens. Who wants a set of utensils with coral handles, except to say you can. They are not useful, only something to fill your museum.

We next visited the New Green Vault. This seems to be the overflow of objects that wouldn’t fit in the Historic Rooms. I had to laugh when I saw sets of protective coverings, but I guess these precious objects all came in their own custom box. What is also shocking about this collection is that it even exists. It not only survived the bombing of Dresden, but also pilfering by rampaging Soviet troops. I cannot believe the Soviet Union even returned these items intact and mostly undamaged. The quantity and quality rivals that of any royal collection.

We are needing a break so we have an early lunch in the Palace Courtyard restaurant. We then continue our visit in the upper museum floors. Next is the Armory with its vast collection. Most of it seems more suited for parading instead of actual battle. It is interesting the other items a general needed when going to battle, such as portable cabinets containing toiletries, surgical tools, and even a vise to pry open castle doors.

The next section was the Turkish Room, which had lots of acquired Ottoman arms and weapons. We saw similar on our visit to Istanbul. The most interesting item was a full-size battle tent you only see in movies.

The next section contained clothing. They were mostly fancy garments when on parade. Fortunately for most kings, real war was probably rare.

The palace state rooms were closed. Only the ballroom was open. It is nice but looks clearly reconstructed. It is too new looking.

There is another section on coins and paper money. Apparently the Saxons were rich because they owned a silver mine. Interestingly one of the currency units was a Groschen. 32 of them were worth one Thaler, from whence came our word Dollar.

Both of us were happy when we finished. The collection was a little too over the top. From the Old Town, we took one of the many trams southeast. Or at least we thought we did. We have a German National Pass that lets us take any transport and I have the phone apps to find the right connection. Unfortunately we find that our route unknowingly changed because of some construction. We punted, took a different tram, and walked the last half mile.

We did all this to visit the Saxon State Library. The central campus has a Book Museum containing the Dresden Codex. This is one of the few surviving books from pre-Columbus America. This accordion-style book is written in Mayan Hieroglyphs. Because it contains lots of numbers and references to astronomy, it was instrumental in deciphering this language. It is amazing that this 800-year-old text survived destruction by Spanish missionaries, but even more that it is thousands of miles away in Dresden. The avid Saxon collectors didn’t know what they bought.

From the library, we took a bus all the way to the Blue Wonder or Loschwitz Bridge. It is an old bridge that somehow survived WWII. It is flanked by two affluent residential areas. Aimee and I had dinner at the Schiller Biergarten facing the river and bridge. My roast pork sandwich was delicious. After getting ice cream, we found a tram that took us all the way back to our hotel.