Dresden

The rubble lay where it fell for forty-five years, and rebuilding began in 1994. Old stones were numbered and put back, so blackened blocks and new sandstone mottle the walls. The cross on top came from the son of a pilot who flew that raid. It opened in 2005.

The king built it to hold festivals, so it is galleries round a court with nowhere to live. A fountain court called the nymphs' bath hides in one corner and is easily walked past. The porcelain rooms set Meissen beside pieces bought from China and Japan.

The clock above the stage turns lettered drums instead of hands and gives the time in five-minute steps. By one account it was hung there to stop the audience pulling out pocket watches.

More than twenty thousand Meissen tiles fill one wall with a picture a hundred metres long. Mounted rulers file past, and painters and craftsmen walk at the rear. Plaster carried the painting first; weather took it off, so tile replaced it in the 1900s.

The historic vault admits only timed tickets. Numbers are capped, and you pass an air lock at the door. Every bag is left behind. Thieves took some of the jewels in 2019, and a number of those pieces came back later.

The walk was raised on top of the old fortifications, so it runs a storey above the river. Someone called it the balcony of Europe, and the glass dome on the art school behind it is known as the lemon squeezer.

Paddle steamers over a century old still carry passengers up and down the Elbe. Through the engine-room glass you watch the pistons working. Upriver they tie up in front of Pillnitz, so the boat out and a bus back is the usual pairing.

It crosses on steel alone with no pier in the water, which in 1893 counted as a wonder. The first coat of paint faded towards blue, and the name stuck to it.

The roof corners curl in the Chinese manner, so from the water it hardly reads as a European palace. The camellia in the garden is over two hundred years old and stands more than eight metres. In winter a glass house on wheels rolls over the whole tree.

Funnels and gutters are fixed to a blue wall so that rain runs through them and sounds as it goes. On a dry day nothing happens, so the noise is only there if you come in the rain.

A stone bridge of 1851 linking sandstone pinnacles in Saxon Switzerland, the Elbe curving far below. From Kurort Rathen station a small ferry crosses the river and stone steps climb up. At dawn, ahead of the coach parties, it is quiet.

A gallery of painting and sculpture from the Romantics, Caspar David Friedrich among them, to the present. After the 2002 Elbe flood swamped its basement stores, the collection was moved into new storage set on top of the roof.

A yellow baroque hunting palace on an island in an artificial lake, with antlers hung in every room. The 1973 fairy-tale film Three Wishes for Cinderella was shot here, and an exhibition on it opens each winter. A narrow-gauge steam railway runs from Radebeul.

A cigarette factory of 1909 built like a mosque, with a stained glass dome and its chimney dressed as a minaret. Factory chimneys were banned in the centre, so this shape got round the rule. Under the top dome, a restaurant and readings take place.

A museum about the body and health, founded in 1912. Its emblem is the Glass Man, a transparent figure showing the blood vessels and organs inside. The labels are written simply, which makes it good with children.