Culture & Lifestyle | 01.09.2006

Dresden Treasury Reopens Six Decades After Allied Bombings

The restored Green Vault at Dresden's Royal Palace, one of Germany's most celebrated museums, was unveiled on Thursday, more than 60 years after World War II bombs reduced it to rubble.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel was one of a number of guests on hand to at the official opening ceremony on Friday.

"This is a meaningful moment for our entire country, and a good day for Europe," she said, accompanied by France's European Minister Catherine Colonna. "More than six decades after its destruction in World War Two, one of Europe's most meaningful vaults has returned to its original location."

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The Green Vault's contents are the biggest surviving princely art collection in Europe but languished in relative obscurity behind the Iron Curtain for decades. The wealth of objects now back on display include an 18th century amber cabinet and theologian Martin Luther's ring.

The Green Vault -- or grünes Gewölbe, as it is known to Germans -- was founded in 1723 by August II, the prince-elector of Saxony and little-loved king of Poland who collected rare, glittering objects like Johann Melchior Dinglinger's 18th-century jewel-encrusted figurines titled "Court of the Grand Moghul of Delhi" and his "Golden Coffee Set."

Germans have a great sense of pomp and are obsessed with ceremony and pegeantry. I would kill to tour that museum. Must be a dozen wonders around every corner.

I don't think America is the greatest country. I think it's Germany. With Russia a close second.

And I don't judge a country by its government. Nor should anyone. That's just jews and assorted crooks and liars. So many little piggies.

300,000 holocausted! In the literal sense. Horrifying murder on an unimaginable scale, by the "greatest generation". Huh, strange ideas about what's "great".