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.
The game park, in the Schloss Moritzburg near Dresden, with an area of 40 hectares/100 acres, dates from the time of Augustus the Strong. Here in large open enclosures live moufflon, red deer, fallow deer and wild pigs. There are smaller enclosures for martens, foxes, pheasants and falcons.
In the lower rooms of the Schloss Moritzburg near Dresden is a memorial museum in honor of the painter and sculptress Käthe Kollwitz, who died in Dresden in 1945, with a small collection of her works. In Käthe-Kollwitz-Platz is a memorial stone.
On the east side of the Moritzburg Schlosspark stands the Fasanenschlösschen, an elegant little Roccoco palace (chinoiserie) built and decorated by J. D. Schade and J. G. Hauptmann between 1769 and 1782 for Frederick Augustus III, who used it occasionally as a summer residence. The Dresden Zoological Museum now uses the rooms of the palace, with stucco ceilings and Roccoco wallpaper, to display a collection of native birds.
A stud farm was established in Moritzburg near Dresden in 1828 with the object of breeding crossbreeds and heavy (draught) horses. The stud now breeds mainly crossbreeds for riding. The parades of stallions attract up to 50,000 visitors annually.
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