Location: Moritzburg, Saxony Map
Constructed: 1542- 46 by Maurice, Elector of Saxony
Tel. (035207) 8730
Open: Apr- Oct: 10am- 5pm daily
Nov- Mar: 10am- 4pm Tue- Sun
Moritzburg Castle is located in the Moritzburg municipality of the
same name near Dresden. The hunting lodge, which dates back to a
hunting lodge from the 16th century, was given its current
appearance in the 18th century under Augustus the Strong.
The
castle, whose main axis runs from south to north, rises on an
artificial island in the castle pond. The baroque four-wing building
with its four towers directly connected to the main building rests
on a pedestal-like base. Eight former guard houses are grouped
around the castle on the island.
The harmonious integration
of the landscape into the castle is completed by the gardens to the
north, the pheasant castle about two kilometers to the east and
connected by a direct line of sight with a small port facility and
the Venus fountain, the Dardanelles and a lighthouse in the center
of the Schneisenstern in the northern Friedewald.
In the years 1542–1546, Duke Moritz had his hunting lodge
furnished with hunting trophies in the Renaissance style. The castle
was later named after him, the original name was Dianenburg. The
hunting lodge at that time already consisted of four thick round
towers, which were connected by a surrounding defensive wall. In
1550 it became the seat of the Moritzburg administration. 1661–1672
the palace chapel was built under the direction of Elector Johann
Georg II. The plans for the chapel came from the builder Wolf Caspar
von Klengel. Between 1656 and 1672 the hunting lodge was expanded
into a castle with the help of Wolf Caspar von Klengel.
In
1697 August the Strong converted to the Catholic faith and became
King of Poland, which resulted in the need for a Catholic church.
After the decision on Moritzburg had been made, the formerly
Protestant castle chapel was consecrated as a Catholic at Christmas
1699 as part of a church service. From 1699 until today, the
Catholic service has been held in the chapel of the castle.
In 1703 plans were drawn up to convert the palace into a baroque
hunting and pleasure palace. The plans are attributed to August the
Strong. In October 1719, the Serenata di Moritzburg by Johann David
Heinichen was premiered here to frame a royal hunt. 1723–1733, plans
for the renovation were implemented under the direction of Matthäus
Daniel Pöppelmann. The castle was changed and new ponds and animal
enclosures were created. The renovation ended with the death of
August. Along with Pillnitz Castle, the palace is one of the main
works of the royal commissioned Dresden Baroque.
The Elector
Friedrich August III. von Sachsen, a grandson of Augustus the
Strong, increasingly included the area around the castle in the
design of the landscape. The Fasanenschlösschen, the Marcolinihaus,
the Venusbrunnen, the harbor and the Moritzburg lighthouse with the
pier at the Bärnsdorf lower pond were built.
Prince Ernst
Heinrich of Saxony used Moritzburg as his permanent residence from
1933 to 1945 and set up some rooms for guided tours. The most
valuable (outsourced) holdings of the palace library set up and
cataloged by Edith Rothe, monastery manuscripts from the Middle
Ages, incunabula, illustrated books from the 16th century, a
collection of autographs, splendid bindings from the time of the
Renaissance and the 18th century and a closed collection of hand
drawings by King Friedrich August, were completely destroyed during
the air raids on Dresden on the night of February 13-14, 1945. In
1945 the Wettins were expropriated. They were able to bury large
parts of their valuable treasures in wooden boxes in the palace
gardens. Except for a few pieces, these were found by the Soviet
troops and transported away. On October 4, 1996, private hobby
archaeologists managed to find several boxes with goldsmith's work
set with gemstones. They were assigned to the Wettin treasure.
Although all metals and precious stones were affected by the long
storage in the earth, the pre-war condition could be restored.
In the years 1946–1949 a museum for baroque was set up in some
rooms of the palace. In the period 1985–1989, the palace chapel was
extensively restored.
Castle construction
General
The
castle was divided into a total of twelve residential quarters with
a total of 200 rooms. The electoral-royal family and their guests as
well as the servants were accommodated here.
With their cross
vaults, the entrance halls on the ground floor are reminiscent of
the old hunting lodge, the Renaissance building of Duke Moritz von
Sachsen. The four large state rooms (billiards room, dining room,
stone hall and monstrous hall) are located on the first floor, each
two storeys high.
The four towers of the castle are named
after their original function. The northeastern kitchen tower was
formerly used to supply the dining room, while the northwestern
baking tower contained the bakery. The Amtsturm is to the southeast
and the Jägerturm to the southwest.
The vaults in the
basement were used as a court kitchen, storage rooms and horse
stables. Utility rooms were also housed in the cellars of the
towers.
Terraces and sculptures
The castle is provided
with a terrace system all around. The statues on the balustrades of
the terrace and on the driveway come from the workshops of Balthasar
Permoser, Benjamin Thomae, Johann Christian Kirchner and Wolf Ernst
Brohn. Two piqueurs with parforce horns and hunting dogs are
depicted on sandstone plinths at the driveway. The balustrades of
the terrace are decorated with figures of hunters, children and
vases.
Interior
A collection of gala carriages welcomes the visitor
in the entrance hall.
The palace is equipped with baroque
interior design from the time of August the Strong. Here are the
state rooms with lacquer and show furniture, Augsburg silver
furniture and hunting weapons. The treasures include, among other
things, gilded leather wallpapers from the 17th century, which are
still preserved in eleven rooms. In the billiard room, named after
the pool table that was once there, monumental paintings on leather
by Louis de Silvestre are exhibited.
The furnishing of many
rooms is dedicated to courtly hunting. The collection of red deer
antlers is one of the most important in the world. The most
impressive part of the trophy collection is located in the dining
room, where many of the 71 red deer trophies are between 270 and 400
years old. They mostly come from districts in Electoral Saxony or
came to Moritzburg as a purchase or gift. Among them is the almost
two meters wide and, at 19.8 kg, heaviest red deer antlers in the
world to date. An antler pole with a chalice-shaped crown, which has
been used as a “welcome” drinking vessel since 1689, can also be
viewed in the dining room.
The stone hall houses a collection
of reindeer and elk antlers. The trophy of an extinct giant deer is
posted above its western entrance. This gift from the Russian Tsar
Peter the Great to Augustus the Strong is over 10,000 years old; the
Crimean peninsula is believed to be the site of discovery.
In
the monstrous hall there are 39 pathologically altered antlers,
including the famous 66-Ender, which was made by Friedrich III in
1696. Margrave of Brandenburg had been shot. While the trophies
mounted on carved animal heads stand in the foreground in the dining
and stone hall, they complement the predominant leather wallpapers
in the monstrous hall with their representations from ancient
mythology.
In 1723 August the Strong bought a magnificent bed
for the Japanese Palace, the canopy of the canopy and the bed
curtains consisted of around a million feathers from peacock, guinea
fowl, duck and pheasant. Its creator, the French Le Normand, had
used an ingenious technique: the feathers were not glued on or
linked, as is usually the case, but worked into the fabric as weft
threads on the loom. As soon as it was acquired, the elector had the
bed curtains pulled down and turned into wall hangings, which is why
the room was later called the Feather Room. In 1830 the feather room
came to Moritzburg Castle. After an extensive 19-year restoration,
the magnificent bed with the wall curtains has been on view again
since 2003.
Chinese, Japanese and Meissen porcelain are only
shown in guided tours in the Historical Porcelain Quarter in the
Jäger Tower, which has been reopened since 2009. The focus is on
Meissen porcelain with hunting motifs and animal figures, i.e.
pieces that correspond to Moritzburg's former destination as a
hunting lodge.
The castle chapel is furnished with fine
stucco and sandstone decorations, ceiling paintings, an altar
structure and a royal box. The west-facing altar is adorned with an
altar painting by an unknown Venetian master, delivered to Dresden
in 1744, depicting the Assumption of the Virgin. The ceiling
painting with the Ascension of Christ comes from the court painter
Johann Fink.
Castle park and surroundings
In 1728 the
palace park was built as an extension of the north-south avenue
coming from Dresden and the north-south axis of the palace on the
adjacent northern mainland. The U-shaped floor plan is about 230 by
150 meters.
The French-style garden was never completed, also
due to the death of Augustus the Strong. Johann Christoph Knöffel
and Matthäus Daniel Pöppelmann, among others, dealt with the
planning. The garden, which leads up to the Friedewald, is based on
the usual design of garden areas at other European royal courts of
that time. A broad central axis is predominant, with two transverse
lines running through it. The three-part ground floor is surrounded
by an avenue of lime trees lined with hedges. Cavalier houses are
located at the two southern intersections of Querallee.
The
garden experienced a further development in the 19th century, by
planting rare plants, which slowly turned the complex into a
romantic park.
An eight-beam, star-shaped system of aisles
for parforce hunting runs through the Friedewald, which adjoins to
the north. At the intersection of the aisles on the elevation of a
forest clearing (Helle) lies the ruins of the Hellhaus, built in
1787 according to plans by Johann Daniel Schade. It was used by
court society during feudal parforce hunts, with the so-called swan
keeper from the roof of the building using flags to indicate the
direction of the game's escape.
An aisle running directly to the east connects the castle
visually with the little pheasant castle 2.5 kilometers away. Not
far from this is the Venus Fountain, built in 1772, one of the
largest Baroque fountain systems in Saxony. Venus is shown here with
Cupid and swans on an artificial rock massif that rises in an
auricle-shaped basin. The fountain symbolizes the eastern end of a
canal that partially runs parallel to the aisle. A miniature harbor
with a pier and lighthouse is located on the Niedere Großteich
Bärnsdorf pond to the east of the little Fasanenschlösschen.
At the confluence of the canal leading from the Venus Fountain to
the Great Pond you will find the Dardanelles, named after the strait
of the same name between the Aegean and Marmara Sea. The now
dilapidated ensemble of artificial bastion-like curves with
loopholes originally extended between this confluence and close to
the harbor. The symbolic miniature replicas of the fortifications of
the original Dardanelle castles in today's Turkey were used to
re-enact naval battles, in particular the naval battle of Çeşme from
1770.
The castle pond surrounding the artificial island was
created from originally four ponds during the renovation phase of
the castle in 1723–1733. The ponds in the Friedewald were created in
the 16th century. Just like the castle pond, they are still used
today for carp breeding. The canal system connecting the ponds
allows targeted fishing by draining the water.
Miscellaneous
The castle has been the setting for fairy tale films on several
occasions; Filming took place there in 1971 for Sixes Come Through
the World, in 1972 for Three Hazelnuts for Cinderella and the 1989
film adaptation of Cinderella. In 2004 it served as the backdrop for
the romantic comedy A Princess to Fall in Love with.
The
Moritzburg Festival has established itself as an annual concert
series for chamber music. It was founded in 1993 and has been under
the artistic direction of cellist Jan Vogler since 2001.
Since 2001 the castle has been the backdrop for the annual
Moritzburg Castle Triathlon.
Since 2002, sculptor symposia
have been held roughly every two years on the east side of
Moritzburg Castle Pond. Since the finished works remain in place, a
sculpture trail that extends into the neighboring forests and is
regularly expanded is created here.
In the winter months
(mid-November to the end of February) there is a winter exhibition
on the fairytale film Three Hazelnuts for Cinderella every year.