For other uses, see Dresden Government District.

**Dresden** (Upper Sorbian: *Drježdźany*) is the capital of the Free State of Saxony. It is in the southeast of Germany, on the River Elbe near the border with the Czech Republic. It has an oceanic climate (**Cfb** in the Köppen climate classification).

History
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Dresden was already settled in the Neolithic part of the Stone Age, but the first written record of the city was in 1206, when Dresden began to develop as a royal residence.

Dresden was bombed a lot at the end of World War II. It was bombed by American and British bombers between 13 February and 15 February 1945. Most of the city's buildings were damaged beyond repair after the bombings. The city had to rebuild most of its buildings after the war.

In 2002 Dresden was flooded in Germany's so-called "century flooding".

Politics and cultural
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Dresden is the political and cultural centre of Saxony. It is the seat of the governmental district of Dresden and of many universities. The city had a popiulation that exceeded 100,000 around 1852.

Dresden has about 488,000 inhabitants (2005). Dresden forms the core of the densely-populated area of the same name in Central Europe and is a traffic junction and an economic centre. Together with the population centres of Chemnitz, Zwickau and Leipzig, it forms the population centre known as the *Metropolregion Saxonia Triangle* .

Traffic
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Dresden has got an international airport *(Flughafen Dresden-Klotzsche)* which has about 2 million passengers/year. This Airport has got daily flight connections to Frankfurt and Munich (Lufthansa), Moscow (Aeroflot), Cologne and Stuttgart (germanwings), Düsseldorf (germanwings) as well as to Zurich (InterSky), Hamburg (eurowings on behalf of germanwings) and London-City (CityJet). The biggest station is *Dresden Hauptbahnhof* (Dresden Main station) with an ICE (InterCityExpress) connection to Leipzig, Erfurt, Frankfurt and Wiesbaden. There's an EuroCity connection to Prague, Graz and Vienna just as an InterCity connection to Berlin and Hamburg. The metropolitan of Dresden has got four highwas:

* A4: Frankfurt - **Dresden** - Goerlitz - Wrocław - Kraków

The S-Bahn network of Dresden
* A13: **Dresden** - Berlin
* A14: **Nossen (near Dresden)** - Leipzig - Magdeburg (- Schwerin)
* A17: **Dresden** - Prague

Dresden has 3 S-Bahn (Metropolitan overground railway) lines and a big tram network.

Other websites
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 Media related to Dresden at Wikimedia Commons

| * v
* t
* e
Cities in Germany by population |
| --- |
| 1,000,000+ | 
* Berlin
* Cologne
* Hamburg
* Munich

 |
| 500,000+ | 
* Bremen
* Dortmund
* Dresden
* Düsseldorf
* Essen
* Frankfurt
* Hanover
* Leipzig
* Nuremberg
* Stuttgart

 |
| 200,000+ | 
* Aachen
* Augsburg
* Bielefeld
* Bochum
* Bonn
* Braunschweig
* Chemnitz
* Duisburg
* Erfurt
* Freiburg im Breisgau
* Gelsenkirchen
* Halle
* Karlsruhe
* Kiel
* Krefeld
* Lübeck
* Magdeburg
* Mainz
* Mannheim
* Münster
* Mönchengladbach
* Oberhausen
* Rostock
* Wiesbaden
* Wuppertal

 |
| 100,000+ | 
* Bergisch Gladbach
* Bottrop
* Bremerhaven
* Cottbus
* Darmstadt
* Erlangen
* Fürth
* Göttingen
* Hagen
* Hamm
* Heidelberg
* Heilbronn
* Herne
* Hildesheim
* Ingolstadt
* Jena
* Kassel
* Koblenz
* Leverkusen
* Ludwigshafen
* Moers
* Mülheim an der Ruhr
* Neuss
* Offenbach am Main
* Oldenburg
* Osnabrück
* Paderborn
* Pforzheim
* Potsdam
* Recklinghausen
* Regensburg
* Remscheid
* Reutlingen
* Saarbrücken
* Salzgitter
* Siegen
* Solingen
* Trier
* Ulm
* Wolfsburg
* Würzburg

 |
| 
* complete list
* municipalities
* metropolitan regions
* cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants

 |