Architectural Digest USA - 12.2019

58 ARCHDIGEST.COM

1. THE BEDCHAMBER FEATURES A RE-CREATED

CEREMONIAL BED. 2. THE ORIGINAL THRONE

ANCHORS THE AUDIENCE CHAMBER IN THE

NEWLY RESTORED STATEROOMS AT DRESDEN’S

FORMER ROYAL PALACE.

RESTORATION

Palace Intrigue

Long destroyed, the

opulent 18th-century

staterooms at Dresden’s

onetime royal residence

shine anew

I

t was the wedding of the century. In 1719, Prince

Frederick Augustus married Archduchess Maria

Josepha, a strategic union between the Saxon court and

the Habsburg empire. As part of a monthlong celebra-

tion in Dresden, Frederick’s father, Augustus the Strong,

unveiled staterooms at the royal palace for which he

commissioned the most exquisite furnishings, textiles, and

works of art a pomp-loving profligate could buy. “Augustus the

Strong wanted to establish himself as one of the important

rulers in Europe,” says Thomas Geisler, director of Dresden’s

Museum of Decorative Arts. “He definitely made a statement.”

Just in time for the 300th anniversary of the historic nuptials,

the rooms have opened to the public following a multiyear

reconstruction by hundreds of artisans. During World War

II, Allied bombs reduced the palace to a burned-out shell.

Fortunately, much of the collection was spirited away to safe

locations, while color photographs taken before the bombing

aided in the re-creation of ceiling murals done by court painter

Louis de Silvestre. Just as in Augustus’s day, visitors now pass

through a choreographed sequence of rooms, each more

impressive than the last. The progression—a highlight of which

is the Tower Room, displaying prized Meissen porcelain—

culminates in the Audience Chamber (with the restored original

throne) and the adjacent bedchamber. The latter, an inner

sanctum reserved primarily for family, contains what Geisler

describes as “the most extravagant object,” the ceremonial bed

lavished with “double layers of gold weavings and embroider-

ies” that have been re-created in their entirety based on the

original headboard. “Room by room,” he adds, “the quality of

the materials—whether silk, silver, gold, whatever—and the

craft just gets richer and richer.” skd.museum (^) —STEPHEN WALLIS

DISCOVERIES

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© SKD, PHOTO: HC KRASS