Saxony is attractive. Last year, more people visited the free state than ever before. As a tourist destination, Saxony registered 5.4 million visitors and 14.7 million overnight stays. That amounts to an increase of 6.1% compared with 2003. The trend was particularly positive in the field of foreign tourism, which grew by more than 10%. The number of overnight stays exceeded the million mark for the first time.
Although, at 8.6%, the proportion of visitors from abroad was only half the national average, it was twice as high as in the other east German Länder. The most popular tourist destinations among foreigners were the state capital Dresden and trade fair city Leipzig. The two metropolitan tourist destinations accounted for 60% of the total. In popularity, they were followed by Saxon Elbland, the Saxon Castle and Heathland, and the Erzgebirge.
www.sachsen-tour.de
Architecture and painting: Dresden is one of Europe’s most beautiful cities. Despite suffering severe damage during the war, the state capital has been able to regain its original charm. Highlights include the Zwinger, a masterpiece of Baroque architecture, the Semper Opera House, Brühlsche Terrasse, and the restored Frauenkirche, the Church of Our Lady. For the city’s 800th jubilee, in 2006, it is planned to reopen the Residenzschloss. The Albertinum houses the Skulturensammlung and Galerie Neue Meister, one of Germany’s most important museums with 2,500 pictures.
Fairs and literature: Leipzig has been a trade fair city for over 500 years. Today, the new exhibition centre attracts visitors with its 25 specialist fairs. The Leipzig Book Fair and prestigious publishing houses, such as Baedecker, Brockhaus and Reklam, also make Leipzig a city of books. Goethe made Auerbach’s Cellar world famous in his Faust. Leipzig’s reputation as a music city was established by Bach, Mendelssohn-Bartholdy and Schumann. Today, St. Thomas’s Choir and the Gewandhaus Orchestra are internationally renowned. The city’s university is Germany’s oldest after Heidelberg.
Idyll and charm: Pirna enchants visitors with its gables and picturesque alleyways. The small town was made famous by Bernardo Belotto, alias Canaletto. He painted the town. Today, the painting hangs alongside pictures of Rome and Vienna in Dresden’s Gemäldegalerie.
Wine and gold: Meissen is located in Germany’s smallest wine-growing region. The town became world famous through the invention of the porcelain that bears its name. August the Strong commissioned Johann Friedrich Böttger to produce gold, but he delivered “white gold”.
Industry and opera: Chemnitz was a mechanical engineering and textiles centre in the age of industrialization. During the GDR era the city went by the name of Karl-Marx-Stadt. An enormous bust of Marx in the city centre still bears witness to this today. In the meantime, mechanical engineering has been able to re-establish itself. And the local people have come to terms with the GDR past. They sell Karl Marx as a souvenir to tourists. They appreciate the reawakening of cultural life in the third largest Saxon city. The opera company is now known for its excellent Wagner performances.
Cliffs and sandstone: Germany’s most beautiful canyon landscape is found in the Elbsandsteingebirge, a range of sandstone mountains. Bizarre rock needles, high table mountains and deep gorges characterize the region. The Elbe twists its way through this romantic landscape. First came the painters of the Romantic period, now it is tourists – more than one million a year. Incidentally, the Frauenkirche in Dresden, Leipzig’s main station and the Reichstag building in Berlin were all built with “golden sand”, sandstone from the Elbe mountains.
Silver and snow: Erzgebirge, or the Ore Mountains, owes its name to centuries of silver mining. When the mineral resources ran out, the local people turned to craft industries. Today, the Erzgebirge is still associated with the art of woodcarving. Every year at Christmas the region becomes a centre of attention. Toys and nutcrackers from the Erzgebirge are popular worldwide. Tourists enjoy visiting the historic mills, copper works and museum mines along the Silver Trail. Winter sports enthusiasts will find one of Germany’s longest and most beautiful cross-country ski courses – with reliable snow cover – in Oberwiesenthal. Jens Weissflog, Olympic gold medallist ski jumper, runs a hotel there.
