Gorgeous palace! The inside is apparently some vr experience thing and not like a normal castle…read moreexperience. They also have art and there's a few different exhibits. The outside was pretty but the whole garden is under construction so it's not the best right now.

What a neat historical place showing off some very old historical art work of Dresden Germany. The…read morecourt yards and gardens were absolutely spectacular to walk through and around the palace. Walking through and understanding culture hear was pretty fun and great experience.

I'm a watch nerd, so I wanted to really love this place. And I did, but I think it could have been…read morebetter. Starting with what worked, the museum presents a really exhaustive chronological timeline of the development of the watch industry in the town, completely with lots and lots of artifacts as examples - some truly impressive. Gorgeous hand finished work of art, marine chronometers that went to the North Pole, pilot's watches manufactured for WWII. You learn a lot about the founding personalities as well as the manufacturing firms involved, and the museum does a similarly good job of covering how the town and the industry worked through Soviet dismantling of the factories post WWII, operations behind the Iron Curtain, and the quartz revolution, before the more recent renaissance with super lux brands that I can only dream about. There is also a great audio guide - very detailed and worth listening to. I really liked the Glashütte Original sponsored exhibit on the ground floor showing how one of their more complicated watches worked - a projector shines on a round table that shows a sort of x-ray view inside the watch movement, highlighting which pieces are involved, how gears and levers move, etc. But that cool cutaway exhibit just made me notice how much "watch basics" are missing from this museum. To be fair, the museum is not selling itself as "how watches work," it's "watchmaking in this town." But I still feel like a little more explanation of the basics of how watches work could help people understand more of the exhibits, which lay on some fairly specific watchmaking terms. There is an upstairs room with a multimedia "glossary" - which would take hours to go through - but just a basic animation of how a movement goes together, what the wheels do, etc. You have to go a little out of your way to visit, and you need to like watches to want to visit, I think, but if that's up your alley, this is a great side trip, especially if you're already in the area. It's an easy drive from Dresden.

Very good museum displaying different kinds of transport with cool photos and models of cars,…read morebuggy's, trains, etc. I enjoyed this a lot. It a realtively small museum with 2 levels and should take about 30-45 minutes to visit. Some of the displays did not have English (some did) descriptions. A good place to visit if you find this type of subject matter interesting.

One of the hidden gems in the surroundings of Dresden. Went there on perfect day in touristy…read moreseason, and still saw like max 10 other people. Very beautiful castle that (best of all) has its own brewery as well! Wandering in the castle was nicer than in most other castles I've ever visisted around the central/eastern europe, since there wasn't much other people around. It was quiet. And romantic. So, I recommend to check it out with your girl/boyfriend and after the round in the castle, please try that beautiful beer in castle pub/restaurant. By train from Dresden it takes about an hour to get there.

As an overview, this is supposed to be a world-class museum summarizing the history of the German…read moremilitary. Perhaps analogize this museum to a Smithsonian in the U.S. The musuem's website boasts: "The Bundeswehr Museum of Military History in Dresden is one of the three major historical museums in Germany, as well as one of the most innovative military museums in the world." But from a museum management and facilities perspective, this museum is a national embarrassment to Germany. Why? Because the museum has completely inadequate lighting. During our visit, the lights were completely turned off in the 1300-1914 exhibit for the first two hours. We literally had to use our phone as flashlights to read anything. The overall the lighting is bad in other areas where the lights were on. The museum website should openly tell people the museum lacks lighting and visitors should bring their own flashlights. If the lighting had been working, I would have given this museum 5 stars. But I rate museums based on actual experience, not aspirational wants. Getting past the lighting fiasco, the museum's chronological coverage of German military history is logical and well-developed. Seeing WWI and WWII through another historical lens is always interesting (as an aside, I strongly recommend the Yasukuni Shrine and its war museum Yūshūkan in Tokyo for an interesting perspective on WWII). Concerning some of the more detailed exhibits, we consistently encountered exhibits with no design and forethought. For example, in one area with vertical pullouts concerning varying views on Napoleon, the pullouts would not extend far enough out to see the whole exhibit. In other areas, videos did not play. I was shocked by the non-functional displays and backwardness in this museum. On the positive side, some of the displays were truly unique including the display on animals used by militaries. Consider skipping the displays on floor 3. Floor 3 has the strangest, tightly spaced, ridiculous vertical displays I've even seen anywhere. Overall cleanliness: Excellent Bathroom cleanliness: Excellent Snack bar: closed when we visited Viewing station of downtown Dresden: impaired visibility due to the building design but worth a quick peek. Time budget: minimum 3-4 hours

NOTE: bring a flash light to see the displays…read more Arrival: this is far from the Dresden city center, but we took the tram here. Google assisted and we were able to take tram 7 here. It was 9 stops and took roughly 23 minutes to arrive. It was an easy walk from the tram to the museum. It was lightly snowing on the walk over. It is a neat modern/classic building that is very nice to look at. The top has a look out of Dresden, but the railing and roof system makes it very hard to see the view. Negatives: 1. there is a sign posted at the museum ticket counter that was a bit odd. It said they do not have replacement bulbs, I thought it was odd. The museum displays more than half have no bulbs. So bring a flashlight or be prepared to use your phone to light the displays because the displays are mounted on black material and in the morning with no sunlight you cannot read anything. There are windows, but they are permanently closed. 2. There is no WiFi. 3. Anything with an interactive video monitor does not work. This is a wonderful military museum with a great deal of history to read and there is a lot of reading to be done while at this museum. The font is a bit small so be prepared to squint in the dark if you don't have a flashlight or in some displays you cannot read anything at all. There are some odd ways of displaying items in the museum, like vertical parallel displays that you have to squeeze between people to look at in the dark with very narrow openings. The museum has military items from paintings, books, clothing, propaganda, children toys, and how each member of the family and including animals were used during the war. There is a coat room to put your coat for storage so you don't have to take it along with you. The museum is quite hot. Cafe: closed Bathrooms: above average cleanliness Cleanliness: above average

This was an interesting 45 minutes. It is a display of products from the old East Germany on the…read moresecond floor of Simmel Center, a shopping center. There are several cars, motorcycles, clocks, living room settings, toys, uniforms, etc. The place is a bit hard to find. You can buy a combination ticket for this exhibit and the Stasi Museum here in Dresden. That is more interesting so if you can only do one, do the Stasi.

This Old Masters Museum is in a complex. The museum entrance was hard to find because of the…read moretourist groups gathering and blocking the entrance. Once we made it into the building, we were rudely greeted by two old and angry women, and told to go downstairs for tickets. We were directed to self service lockers for coats and backpacks then to purchase tickets. The same rude "greeters" on the first floor practically yelled at me because I had my purse with me. She demanded that I return and store it in the locker. I asked if I could keep it with me because it contained my passport and with a stern and rude "nein" she turned me away. I did manage to put my valuables in my pocket in hopes that there are no pick pockets in the museum. The museum's collection is impressive, but the curation is not up to par. Many of the master works are behind glass such as Raphael's Sistina Madonna. The skylights and lighting above the Sistina Madonna casted a terrible glare, which made it impossible to enjoy the piece from a direct front view. The pieces are incredible, which would make this a 5* museum, but the terrible curation and horrible customer service bumped down 2*.

Ekstasis ~ "standing outside oneself" (from Greek, ex- "out" + histanai "to place")…read more First there was Raphael's Sistine Madonna. Then, somewhere between Giorgione's Sleeping Venus and Vermeer's Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window -- ecstasy waved and found us: sitting on round sofas, gazing at art.