Bautzner Strasse Memorial

About this place

This compound was the East German Ministry for State Security's district headquarters for Dresden and its remand prison, and it is now the only Stasi remand prison in Saxony surviving in largely original condition. The cells, the interrogation rooms, the transport corridors and the district chief's office are as they were left, down to the prisoner transport van in the yard, disguised on the outside as an ordinary delivery lorry. The history runs deeper than the Stasi. In the basement is a cell block used by the Soviet security service after nineteen forty-five, where Germans were sentenced and many were sent on to distant camps. State Security then took the site over and ran surveillance and detention for the whole district from here until the republic's last autumn. On the fifth of December nineteen eighty-nine the citizens of Dresden walked in and occupied the compound, one of the first Stasi headquarters in the country to fall into civilian hands. Allow at least ninety minutes, and expect a heavy visit: narrow corridors, steel doors and recorded testimony from former prisoners. Entry is eight euros, free for under-eighteens and free every Wednesday from four in the afternoon. Public guided tours run on Friday at four and on the first Sunday of the month at eleven. Tram eleven stops at Angelikastrasse, a short walk downhill from the gate.