Dreikönigskirche
The Dreikönigskirche is a Lutheran church on Hauptstraße in Dresden's Innere Neustadt, built from 1732 to 1739 to plans by Matthäus Daniel Pöppelmann.
What it is
It is both a church and a conference centre, the Haus der Kirche.
The operator names the building as a whole Dreikönigskirche – Haus der Kirche.
History
The church was built when the Neustadt was laid out anew in the 1730s, facing the new main street, today's Hauptstraße.
George Bähr worked with Pöppelmann on the building.
The 87.5-metre tower was added to the west side in the 1850s and completed in 1857, to plans by Karl Moritz Hänel and Frommherz Lobegott Marx.
The church was rebuilt as the Haus der Kirche, keeping its outer form, and the rebuilding was completed in 1990.
On 27 October 1990 the first freely elected Saxon state parliament held its first session in the church's large hall, and it met there in its first years.
Altar and Dance of Death
The church holds the Dresden Dance of Death (Dresdner Totentanz), a Renaissance relief frieze by Christoph Walther I, put up there when the church was rebuilt around 1990.
The altar, by the court sculptor Johann Benjamin Thomae, shows the parable of the wise and foolish virgins.