Saxony is a region in Eastern Germany that borders Poland and the Czech Republic, and it has no shortage of extraordinary castles and palaces. Meanwhile, read my story on Dresden’s most luxurious hotel. (Dresden is the capital of Saxony.)
Not far from Dresden lies Moritzburg Castle. It began as a hunting lodge and was expanded in the 18th century, under Augustus the Strong, into a magnificent Baroque estate ringed by water. The castle stands on an artificial island in the middle of a lake, part of a landscape of ponds long used for carp breeding.
Inside, the two obsessions of the Saxon court are on full display. Moritzburg holds the world’s largest surviving collection of gilt-leather wall hangings, with 11 rooms still dressed in their original early-18th-century coverings, and a trophy collection to match: the Hall of Monstrosities preserves a series of deformed antlers, including a 66-point rack taken in 1696.
The strangest treasure sits apart from all of it. The Federzimmer, or Feather Room, was acquired by Augustus the Strong in 1723 from a Paris plumassier for his Japanese Palace in Dresden. More than a million peacock, pheasant, guinea-hen, and duck feathers were woven into the canvas as weft across roughly forty square meters, not glued on, but worked in at the loom.
The room moved to Moritzburg in 1830, disappeared from view in 1972 in poor condition, and was restored over 19 years by conservators at the Stadtmuseum Dresden, earning a Europa Nostra Award in 2004. Visitors now view it through a wall of glass in a climate-controlled gallery.
Little Pheasant Castle
A walk east through the park leads to the Fasanenschlösschen, the Little Pheasant Castle, a shell-pink Rococo pavilion built between 1770 and 1776 for Elector Friedrich August III, and regarded today as the last castle in Saxony preserved in the original Dresden Rococo style.
Its interiors carry wall hangings of feathers, straw, pearls, and chinoiserie embroidery, fully restored between 2010 and 2013. The setting is the real curiosity. The small castle looks out over a miniature harbor and a painted-brick lighthouse rising 21.8 meters, the only lighthouse in Saxony.
This is where the court once staged mock naval battles among artificial bastions nicknamed the Dardanelles, playing at sea in the middle of a landlocked forest. For all the theater, it was a working building: the grounds around it were a pheasantry, breeding birds for the hunt and the royal table.
The Saxon State Court’s horse breeding operation still runs today. Across from the castle island stand the hunting stables the architect Pöppelmann completed in 1733. It was built originally to house 110 horses for parforce hunts. In 1828, King Anton stationed 38 stallions there and founded what is now the Saxon State Stud.
The stud offers tours of its stables, and its famous stallion parades return on September 5, 13, and 19, 2026, in a four-hour program that includes a grand dressage quadrille of 25 stallions and a historic mail coach drawn by sixteen heavy warmbloods.
For a quieter evening, the Musik & Hengste concerts pair the Central German Chamber Orchestra with horses in the historic riding hall.Housed in the former electoral hunting stables, it is part of the Saxon Stud Administration, which also includes the State Technical College for Riding and Driving.
The Palm House at Pillnitz Palace Park
Downriver from Dresden, Pillnitz Palace & Park layers chinoiserie onto late Baroque across three palaces and a park of English, Dutch, and Chinese gardens. Construction on its Palm House began in 1859, and at the time, it was the largest cast-iron greenhouse in Germany, a structure often compared to London’s Crystal Palace and the Temperate House at Kew.
Reopened in 2009 for its 150th anniversary, the glasshouse now presents exotic plants across 660 square meters in three parts: a south wing of Cape flora from South Africa, a central octagonal hall of palms built around an oval fountain, and a north wing of Australian and New Zealand vegetation as well as English and Chinese pavilions.
The park’s headline resident stands outside. The Pillnitz camellia, more than 230 years old and planted in its present spot in 1801, reaches 8.9 meters and produces as many as 35,000 carmine blooms between February and April. A glass house on rails rolls over it each winter.
One planning note for 2026: the Museum of Decorative Arts inside the palace is closed for the year, though the park and Palm House remain open.
An hour south of Leipzig, Colditz Castle stands out for its white gables as one of the finest 16th-century architectural monuments in central Germany. During the Second World War, it served as Oflag IV-C, a camp for high-ranking Allied officers. These inventive prisoners, among them a nephew of Winston Churchill, considered many different types of escape routes via tunnels and hidden radio rooms and improvised tools.
Yet today, it’s the new histopad that provides the most comprehensive information on the castle’s historic uses even before it became a famous prison.
The most audacious attempt never left the building. Over roughly 18 months, British pilots Jack Best and Bill Goldfinch designed and built a two-seater glider in the attic above the chapel, hidden behind a false wall, using floorboards, bed sheets, and salvaged parts. The plan was to break through the gable wall and catapult the aircraft along a runway laid on the roof ridge, counterweighted by a bathtub filled with concrete.
Liberation arrived first in April 1945, and the original glider vanished after the war. A flying replica built for a 2012 documentary now occupies the same chapel attic, on display since the 70th anniversary of the castle’s liberation. Guided tours climb to it, and guests who want to linger can stay overnight in the castle’s youth hostel.
See Visit Saxony for more information.
Melanie Votaw is the Publisher and Executive Travel Writer of LuxuryWeb Magazine. She has visited more than 50 countries on 6 continents and written for such magazines as Executive Travel, Just Luxe, Business Insider, South China Morning Post, Travel Mindset, and more. She is a member of the International Food, Wine & Travel Writers Association, New York Travel Writers Association, and International Travel Writers Alliance. Melanie's photography has won awards, and she has also written 43 nonfiction books as either the author or ghostwriter.
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