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Saxon Switzerland

About 40km south of Dresden, Saxon Switzerland (Sächsische Schweiz, aka Elbsandsteingebirge or Elbe Sandstone Mountains) embraces a unique and evocative landscape. This is wonderfully rugged country where nature has chiselled porous rock into bizarre columns, battered cliffs, tabletop mountains and deep valleys. The Elbe courses through thick forest, past villages and mighty hilltop castles. No wonder such fabled beauty was a big hit with 19th-century Romantic artists, including the painter Caspar David Friedrich. In 1990, about a third of the area became Saxony’s only national park, Saxon Switzerland National Park (Nationalpark Sächsische Schweiz).

Attractions

Must-see attractions

Festung Königstein
Saxon Switzerland
Festung Königstein is the largest intact fortress in Germany, and so imposing and formidable that noone in history has ever even bothered to attack it,…
Personenaufzug
Saxon Switzerland
This old lift, which dates from 1905, whisks you up a 50m-high tower for views and access to a footbridge linking to a pretty forest path that runs into…
Felsenburg Neurathen
Saxon Switzerland
A partly reconstructed medieval castle in the Bastei.
Nationalparkzentrum
Saxon Switzerland
The National Park Centre has ho-hum exhibitions on local flora, fauna and how the sandstone formations were shaped, but the evocative visuals of the 17…

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