Neumarkt

About this place

The Neumarkt is the square the Frauenkirche stands in. Before nineteen forty-five it was hemmed in by dense blocks of baroque merchant houses; on the night of the thirteenth and fourteenth of February the firestorm took the lot. The body of the church held for two more days and then fell. Under East German rule the rubble was cleared and the space left open for decades, with the heap of stones standing alone as a memorial. The square came back only after the church was finished in two thousand and five. The surrounding ground was divided into eight quarters, each rebuilt as a separate project: some buildings are close copies of what stood there, others are new work behind a historically shaped facade. The dark blocks scattered across the church's own stonework are not decoration but original stones lifted out of the rubble and returned to the positions calculated for them, which is worth standing still for. A visit costs nothing and takes half an hour: a loop of the square, the Luther monument in front of the church, and the long Johanneum building that was once the royal stables and now holds the transport museum. Be honest with yourself about what you are looking at. Plenty of Dresdeners regard the result as a stage set rather than a city, and the ground floors are wall-to-wall cafes and souvenir shops at tourist prices. Walk two streets away if you want coffee at a normal rate.