Qualla: Moritzburg Castle

Moritzburg Castle: Introduction

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jiuguang Wang, CC BY-SA 2.0. Augustus the Strong, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, acquired a four-poster bed in 1723 with approximately one million peacock, pheasant, guinea hen, and duck feathers woven into the canvas as the weft. The feathers were not glued or tied. They were threaded through, the way wool would be threaded into cloth. Augustus had the curtains turned into wall hangings and named the room the Federzimmer, the feather room. After a nineteen-year restoration the bed and hangings have been on display at Moritzburg since 2003. They sit in a pink and yellow castle on its own square island in an artificial lake. The drive from Dresden takes about twenty minutes. The atmosphere has not changed in three hundred years.

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Image: Jiuguang Wang | CC BY-SA 2.0

Moritzburg Castle: From Hunting Lodge to Stage Set

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Heribert Pohl --- Thanks for half a million clicks! from Germering bei München, Bayern, CC BY-SA 2.0. Duke Moritz of Saxony built the original lodge here between 1542 and 1546 as a place to hunt deer and boar in the Friedewald, the dense forest north of Dresden. It was a working lodge with thick walls and a chapel added by John George II in the 1660s, designed by Wolf Caspar von ...

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Image: Heribert Pohl --- Thanks for half a million clicks! from Germering bei München, Bayern | CC BY-SA 2.0

Moritzburg Castle: Inside the Apartments

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit C. Cossa, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Porzellanquartier displays Chinese, Japanese, and Meissen porcelain, much of it depicting the hunting scenes the castle was originally built around. The Augsburg-made silver furniture in the apartments was styled after Louis XIV's silver at Versailles, which the French king f...

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Image: C. Cossa | CC BY-SA 3.0

Moritzburg Castle: The Star of Alleys

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. An eight-arm star of alleys was cut through the Friedewald to the north of the castle, designed for royal fox hunting with hounds. The Hellhaus, built in 1787 at the intersection, sits on a raised point above the paths. From its roof the so-called swan keeper would raise flags to...

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Image: Unknown author | Public domain

Moritzburg Castle: The Little Pheasant Castle

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit DynaMoToR, CC BY-SA 3.0. Elector Frederick Augustus III had the shell-pink Fasanenschlosschen built in the 1770s on the foundation of an earlier pavilion by Johann Christoph Knoffel. Johann Daniel Schade, his royal architect, designed it in Rococo with deliberately Chinese touches: the high ogee roof, th...

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Image: DynaMoToR | CC BY-SA 3.0

Moritzburg Castle: Cinderella in the Snow

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. Most German-speaking visitors of a certain age recognize Moritzburg instantly, because the 1973 Czech-East German co-production of Three Wishes for Cinderella was filmed here. The film's Christmas television showings have become a tradition across Germany, the Czech Republic, Slo...

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Image: Unknown author | Public domain