Zwinger Palace Dresden

The Zwinger (Der Dresdner Zwinger) is a palace in Dresden, eastern Germany, built in Rococo style and designed by court architect Matthäus Daniel Pöppelmann. It served as the orangery, exhibition gallery and festival arena of the Dresden Court.

The location was formerly part of the Dresden fortress of which the outer wall is conserved. The name derives from the German word Zwinger (outer ward of a concentric castle); it was for the cannons that were placed between the outer wall and the major wall. The Zwinger was not enclosed until the Neoclassical building by Gottfried Semper called the Semper Gallery was built on its northern side.

Today, the Zwinger is a museum complex that contains the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister (Old Masters Picture Gallery), the Dresden Porcelain Collection (Porzellansammlung) and the Mathematisch-Physikalischer Salon (Royal Cabinet of Mathematical and Physical Instruments).

Germany (ⁱ/ˈdʒɜrməni/; German: Deutschland), officially the Federal Republic of Germany (German: Bundesrepublik Deutschland, pronounced [ˈbʊndəsʁepuˌbliːk ˈdɔʏtʃlant] ( listen)), is a federal parliamentary republic in western-central Europe. The country consists of 16 states, and its capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 square kilometres (137,847 sq mi) and has a largely temperate seasonal climate. With 81.8 million inhabitants, it is the most populous member state in the European Union. Germany is one of the major political and economic powers of the European continent and a historic leader in many theoretical and technical fields.

Europe (ⁱ/ˈjʊərəp/ EWR-əp or /ˈjɜrəp/ YUR-əp) is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting the Black and Aegean Seas.

Matthäus Daniel Pöppelmann (May 3, 1662 - January 17, 1736) was a German master builder who helped to rebuild Dresden after the fire of 1685.

Pöppelmann was born in Herford. As court architect for the Elector of Saxony, Augustus II the Strong, he designed the grandiose Zwinger palace in Dresden. He was also in charge of major works at Dresden Castle, Pillnitz Castle and he designed the Vineyard Church (Weinbergkirche) in Pillnitz. Pöppelmann, together with Johann Christoph Naumann, developed an urban plan for a portion of the city of Warsaw, Poland, which was only partially realized, including the Saxon Axis and other important streetscapes.

He died in Dresden in 1736.

Media related to Matthäus Daniel Pöppelmann at Wikimedia Commons

The Free State of Saxony (German: Freistaat Sachsen [ˈfʁaɪʃtaːt ˈzaksən]; Upper Sorbian: Swobodny stat Sakska) is a landlocked state of Germany, bordering Brandenburg, Saxony Anhalt, Thuringia, Bavaria, the Czech Republic, and Poland. It is the tenth-largest German state in area, with an area of 18,413 square kilometres (7,109 sq mi), and the sixth most populous of Germany's sixteen states, with a population of 4.3 million.

Located in the middle of an erstwhile German-speaking part of Europe, the history of the state of Saxony spans more than a millennium. It has been a medieval duchy, an electorate of the Holy Roman Empire, a kingdom, and, from 1918 to 1952 and again from 1990, a republic.

The area of the modern state of Saxony should not be confused with Old Saxony, the area inhabited by Saxons. Old Saxony corresponds approximately to the modern German states of Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and the Westphalian part of North Rhine-Westphalia.