Schloss Moritzburg

14km/9mi northwest of Dresden, in a landscape reserve, is Schloss Moritzburg, an Electoral hunting lodge and pleasure palace in the ochre and white of Saxon Baroque. Here, on a low granite hill in a marshy depression in the Friedewald, Duke (later Elector) Moritz built in 1542-44 a modest hunting-box which developed into a large hunting lodge. Then, during the reign of Augustus the Strong, in 1723-36, Z. Longueline, M. D. Pöppelmann and J. C. Knöffel built the palace as we see it today.

The old hunting lodge and its chapel (1661-71) were incorporated in the new structure. Celebrated sculptors like Balthasar Permoser, J. C. Kirchner and Benjamin Thomae carved the Baroque statues on the balustrades of the carriage ramp and the terrace. The decoration and furnishing of the interior (wallpaper, furniture, painting, etc.), still preserved almost complete and unaltered, were the work of the court painter Louis de Silvestre, the interior decorator Raymond Leplat and the wallpaper designer Pierre Mercier. Outstanding among the pictures are works by Lucas Cranach the Younger and A. Thiele and the "Man of Sorrows" by Permoser in the chapel.