The open space gallery consisting of a total of 15 designed photo benches invites you to take a special tour through Dessau’s city center. Take your time for a walk and discover photo impressions on an approximately 3.5 km long circuit between the train station and Kavalierstraße. Temporary exhibitions present appealing topics such as urban development, urban history and urban culture in this interesting format.
The current exhibition shows the “Most beautiful places in our city” on 29 photo motifs. Local and regional photographers were asked to send in their very personal and most beautiful views of the sights of Dessau-Roßlau. The impressive result can be viewed during a walk through the city, can also be experienced digitally and inspires to visit the original sites as well. The photo impressions will be on display until spring 2022.
When people talk about classical modernism today, they also talk about Dessau. Because it is the city with which the Bauhaus is most strongly associated.
From 1925 to 1932, Dessau was home to one of the most famous schools of architecture and art in the world: the Bauhaus. Walter Gropius’ Bauhaus building is considered an icon of modernism and is probably one of the most photographed buildings in Germany.
The Garden Kingdom of Dessau-Wörlitz offers a unique symbiosis of nature, architecture and fine arts on 142 km².
In and around Dessau, seven palaces and parks, gardens and lakes are laid out and visually and creatively interlinked. Parts of these sites are embedded in the Middle Elbe Biosphere Reserve.
Georgium Castle and Park are only a short walk away. After extensive renovation of the palace, the Anhalt Picture Gallery Dessau will reopen in 2021.
The roots of the Anhaltisches Theater Dessau, whose Großes Haus is one of the largest stage houses in Europe, go back over 225 years to its days as a court theater. The theater produces drama, musical theater, ballet and puppet theater and regularly attracts visitors from all parts of Germany.
As a symphony and opera orchestra, the Anhaltische Philharmonie Dessau offers a varied concert experience. The theater is also networked outside the 1,000-seat venue: with the Kurt Weill Festival, the Bauhaus, the Dessau-Wörlitz Garden Realm and many other players.
The Bauhaus Museum Dessau was honored with the prestigious title “Museum of the Year” just one year after its opening in 2019. With around 50,000 objects, the collection of the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation is the second largest and at the same time one of the youngest collections on the Bauhaus worldwide.
Complementing the museum qualities, a new cultural Bauhaus venue has been created in the center of Dessau as an experimental venue for performative and discursive formats. Every year, Bauhaus and theater merge in unique events.
The memorial mausoleum is Dessau’s last domed building, which combines many architectural elements in its appearance.
It was once the burial place of the members of the Duchy of Anhalt. Today, the Dessau Zoo is located on the grounds of the former mausoleum park. The 11-hectare landscape-protected zoo is the city’s largest and most popular local recreation center, whose fauna and flora are visited and admired by more than
100,000 visitors every year.
The extensive landscape garden is the second largest park in the Garden Kingdom. It is named after the builder and younger brother of Prince Franz, Prince Johann Georg.
The park impresses with numerous classicist and romanticizing park buildings, sculptures, small architecture and monuments, which were harmoniously embedded in the landscape and nature.
Parallel to the Bauhaus building, Walter Gropius designed three identical duplexes for the Bauhaus masters and a single house for the director. They were built in a pine grove on today’s Ebertallee.
The list of the first residents reads like a “Who’s Who” of modernism: Walter Gropius, László Moholy-Nagy, Lyonel Feininger, Georg Muche, Oskar Schlemmer, Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee. The houses can be visited individually or with guided tours.
In 1929, the city of Dessau commissioned the construction of the Kornhaus excursion restaurant. The building was to be erected on the Elbe embankment, very close to the steamer landing stage.
The name recalls a historic granary that had stood here until the 1870s. The Bauhaus building, steeped in history and designed by Carl Fieger, presents itself as one of the most beautiful places in the city due to its magnificent location on the Elbe.
The UNESCO Middle Elbe Biosphere Reserve, one of the last near-natural river landscapes in Europe, covers 126,000 hectares.
Perhaps its most beautiful and diverse part can be found in Dessau and the surrounding area.
Quiet lakes and flood channels, inland dunes and wet meadows, mighty oaks and wide meadows give the landscape its character, which is home to rare animal and plant species and forms the backdrop for the Garden Kingdom of Dessau-Wörlitz.
As a bridge for pedestrians, the Hunting Bridge over the Mulde River is a junction of cycling and hiking trails.
The R1 European Cycle Route and the Fürst Franz Garden Kingdom Tour cross the bridge, and the Mulde Cycle Route ends at this point.
Dessau-Roßlau offers well-developed cycling and hiking trails – the predominantly flat landscape along the Elbe and Mulde rivers makes cycling and hiking a pleasure.
The Kavalierstraße presents itself in new splendor and as a promenade in the city center.
Dessau’s main post office in the middle of Kavalierstraße is one of the city’s most beautiful buildings in the neo-Renaissance style.
On the gables, fox, seahorse and eagle symbolize the post office’s transport routes on land, water and – quite modern for those times – in the air.
Dessau-Roßlau is the third-largest city in Saxony-Anhalt, over 800 years old and developed as a planned urban settlement of merchants and craftsmen.
The ideas of the German Enlightenment made their way out of the city, and it was from here that design, architecture and aircraft construction were revolutionized. To this day, highly innovative and forward-looking ideas for the whole world are developed in Dessau-Roßlau.
Hugo Junkers, one of the most important German engineers and entrepreneurs of the 20th century, worked in Dessau.
Thanks to Junkers’ gas appliances and aircraft, Dessau gained international renown in the 1920s.
The “Hugo Junkers” Dessau Museum of Technology provides an insight into Junkers’ life’s work and the cutting-edge technical achievements of his time. An Icarus sculpture, stylized from the logo of the Junkers aircraft works, was erected as a monument to Hugo Junkers at the east entrance to the city.
The Johannbau is the only surviving wing of the former four-winged residential palace of the princes and dukes of Anhalt. It houses the Museum of City History and illuminates the 800-year cultural history of the city and the region, rich in famous personalities and innovations.
The museum landscape is enriched by the Museum of Natural History and Prehistory, the Moses Mendelssohn Center and the Kurt Weill Center, among others.
Pollingpark, a small green oasis located in the city quarter “Am Leipziger Tor”, was a churchyard between 1876 and 1889, the so-called Cemetery II. The city’s cemeteries hold exciting stories about the grounds themselves and personalities buried there.
Special guided tours allow visitors to immerse themselves in this history.
The Großkühnau Landscape Park is part of the Dessau-Wörlitz Garden Kingdom. It was created by skilfully exploiting the natural situation, an extensive floodplain forest area with a lake, wide meadow areas and a hill with the Weinbergschlösschen as a vantage point.
The brick plaster building on a high sandstone base and with a flat gable roof, was originally used as a ducal tea house. Today the place is among other things the scene of the annual vineyard festival.
Mosigkau is home to one of the few rococo ensembles in Germany that has been largely preserved in its original state. It is part of the UNESCO World Heritage Garden Kingdom of Dessau-Wörlitz.
It was built as a summer residence for Princess Anna Wilhelmine of Anhalt-Dessau. The unique painting hall in the palace and a tour of the palace park with a small maze and a Chinese teahouse are recommended.
The almost intimate grounds of the Luisium in the east of the city captivate with their perfectly orchestrated connection to the surrounding landscape.
With its proportions that are as simple as they are perfect, the neoclassical palace is a masterpiece by architect Erdmannsdorff.
The palace and park were a gift from Prince Franz von Anhalt-Dessau to his wife Louise and are now part of the UNESCO World Heritage Garden Kingdom of Dessau-Wörlitz.
In the heart of the city lies the market square and the city hall, built in 1898 with a 73 m high tower, as the seat of the city administration. Not only with weekly, regional and Advent markets the market place is transformed into an experience area.
With the installation of the “Garden Dream Lounge”, an oasis of well-being was created with seating elements and colorful planting. Here, from May to October, visitors are invited to linger, relax, rest and enjoy culture.
The Beckerbruch forest and marsh area is part of the Georgium Landscape Park, the second largest in the Dessau-Wörlitz Garden Kingdom UNESCO World Heritage Site, together with the castle, the Georgengarten and the Elbe meadows.
The Beckerbruch was left natural and embellished with small architecture and monuments. And as you can see: Excursions to the Dessau grounds are delightful at any time of year.
The Flussbad, located at the Rehsumpf in the water town of Dessau-Roßlau, is one of the oldest surviving river baths in Germany.
It was founded in 1907 and supported by Hugo Junkers in the twenties with projects such as the construction of a clubhouse. After a period of decay, it is once again becoming an attractive place for recreation and socializing thanks to volunteer efforts.
The Snake House is located in the Luisium, which is part of the UNESCO World Heritage Garden Kingdom of Dessau-Wörlitz. Princess Louise, the wife of Prince Franz, retreated to the silence of nature in the house built in the neo-Gothic style.
The vernacular named the snake house, built around 1790 on a small hill, after the shape of its gargoyle. Today it is used as a vacation home where visitors can walk as Prince Louise once did.
The oldest building elements of the Roßlau moated castle in the northern district of the twin city date back to the 12th century. Every year, the picturesque backdrop of this castle complex is transformed into a venue for numerous events.
The medieval spectacle, the Advent market and the international festival “This is Ska” are firm favorites. The events are enriched by the Castle Theater Summer with its classical theater productions staged especially for the castle.
North of the Elbe, in the Roßlau district, the long history of Elbe shipping and steel shipbuilding is proudly presented.
A model of the “Roßlau paddle wheel”, the important invention of an eccentric-controlled paddle wheel for paddle steamers by the Sachsenberg company from the 1880s, is strikingly visible in the Roßlau town area.
Tradition and local ties in the “Schifferstadt” are still lived today with the annual Heimat- und Schifferfest, exhibitions in the Schifffahrtsmuseum and in the Roßlauer Schiffswerft.
The church of Großkühnau is the oldest in the Garden Kingdom of Dessau-Wörlitz and is one of the earliest German neo-Romanesque church buildings ever built. It is also Germany’s first police church, a place of reflection and meeting for police officers.
Church of St. Johannis
St. Johannis Church (shown here at the site) was commissioned as a Lutheran church in 1702 and houses three valuable panel paintings from the workshops of the Cranach family.
St. Mary’s Church on the market square in Roßlau was first mentioned in 1316. Its baptismal bell is the oldest bell in the Anhalt region.
This church building exemplifies the city’s diverse church landscape. More than 30 churches of different denominations can be found in the city. With their different architectural styles, windows, facades, towers and furnishings, they significantly shape the cityscape.
St. Mary’s Church is the oldest church in Dessau. With its immediate proximity to the town hall and the city palace (Johannbau), it is one of the most characteristic architectural witnesses to the history of the Ascanian princes in the city and serves as the burial place for the princes of Anhalt-Dessau and their families.
As a former Protestant sacred building, it now serves as the city’s event and cultural center.
Großkühnau Palace was built for Prince Albert of Anhalt-Dessau, a brother of Leopold III Friedrich Franz of Anhalt-Dessau, in 1780.
It is part of the Großkühnau Landscape Park and, together with the park, the church and Lake Kühnau, forms an ensemble in the UNESCO World Heritage Garden Kingdom of Dessau-Wörlitz. Today, the castle is the administrative headquarters of the Dessau-Wörlitz Cultural Foundation.
Dessau-Roßlau has been the headquarters of the Federal Environment Agency since 2005. A good 970 employees work here in a modern office building built to ecological standards.
The energy concept of the award-winning building is based on the use of renewable energies. Hugo Junkers already made history on the site. Dessau’s burgeoning gas industry of the 19th century had its origins in the so-called Gas Quarter.
