800 years of Dresden

The first section of the permanent exhibition is dedicated to the history of the city between the early settlement in the Elbe Valley and the heyday of the Augustan period. As an introduction, an elaborately designed relief model animation film installation and a walk-in aerial photograph give an impression of the eight hundred years of development and the current extent of the city. The world of the Middle Ages can be reconstructed through archaeological finds, relics and other evidence of religious life, architectural fragments and insignia of the city administration. The following chapters are devoted to the rise of the Albertine residence to a city of European importance during the Renaissance and to a center of power of the Saxon-Polish Union in the Baroque era. Models of the city and buildings illustrate the topography of the city. Guild objects and outstanding products demonstrate the high standard of the town's craftsmanship. The »Ten Commandments« votive tablets from the Church of the Holy Cross, the flasher pulpit from St. Bartholomew's Church and the burial objects from St. Sophia's Church (»Sophienschatz«) are undoubtedly highlights.

The third room of the permanent exhibition tells the story of the city from the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 to the Peaceful Revolution of 1989 / 90. For the city of Dresden and its citizens, the changing forms of government and social systems were associated with war and peace, destruction and reconstruction, oppression and freedom, crime and humanity, disappointment and hope. The Janus-faced nature of modernism in the eventful 20th century is reflected in the choice of objects and design. A wedge runs through the centre of the exhibition space, representing the destruction of the city on 13/14 February 1945, which is told with its pre- and post-history. Unique exhibits and several media stations are dedicated to turning points in the city's history, the relationship between rule and everyday life and present exemplary biographies. Films that accompany the narrative are particularly noteworthy: City advertising for the exhibition and cultural city from the 1920s, original footage of the transport of Dresden's Jews to the "Hellerberg Jewish camp" in 1942, propaganda films of the "socialist metropolis" from the GDR era and recordings from the October Days of 1989.