My first impression of Dresden, after walking around the old city center was a bit different from what I now think of the city at the end of a sightseeing tour day.
The well restored “Frauenkirche” and other monsterenous buildings built in sandstone and often decorated let you think you are in a different time. But after a bit of reflection, one recognizes that most of these buildings where badly destroyed in the second World War and have not been maintained during the DDR. So most of how these buildings looks is how they have been restored in the last 20 years.
This is even more obvious if you look at the rest of the city, where people live and work. There are only a few houses or villas left in a desolate state. But that is how it looked here 20 years ago. All the rest is nice and clean. So essentially, that city has been build in the last 20 years – kind of.
