Dresden is only two hours from Berlin by train, and I was looking forward to seeing the famed Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister painting museum, as well as the newly rebuilt Frauenkirche faithful copy of the original destroyed in the war. Getting out of the train nothing but hideousness could be seen. During the occupation the DDR didn't do much re-building preferring to leave the destruction as accusation of guilt against the Allies. Some of what they did do, of anonymous concrete Soviet styled buildings is being knocked down. If anything could make the horribleness of war, and revenge sink in, this should do it. Completely flattened by Bomber Harris's firestorm raids as response to the bombing and destruction of Coventry the two cities are twinned not only by their destruction but also in their rebuilt, unappealing mediocrity. Tower blocks and shopping mall banality is all that can be seen, nothing remotely like the word Dresden conjures up, of an established historical city. Staggering past all that, one wonders how people can stand it and why wars go on. Then of a sudden the Cathedral looms, and a cluster of immensely beautiful Baroque buildings. How did this magnificence survive is then the question, and gratefulness that it did. It is an uneasy mix of revulsion at the devastation of war and awe at what remains that I feel. The replica Frauenkirche glows and its soft pastel colours enchant but however lovely, it looks too new, lacking the accretion of feeling that it will acquire over the next hundred years, if it is still there. What is not at all a mystery is why the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister is so famed. Again it is overwhelming to see so many and such great works hung on the walls, packed in tightly. Rembrandts and Titians are so numerous that some you will see hung very high up. And without crowds pressing in. I can't believe my eyes there are two such important masterpieces as The Bride and The Letter by Vermeer in an empty gallery. Room after room of Cranachs many of which I have never even seen reproduced before are completely mesmerizing. Let alone that strange painting with the two angels at the bottom that all the greeting cards love so much, Raphael's Sistine Madonna. A glimpse of greatness in spite of all.
