Where has Dresden been all these years? Behind the Iron Curtain, mostly. Augustus the Strong built it, and Arthur "Bomber" Harris tried to destroy it; but it is emerging from 50 years of communism in better shape than you might have expected.
Approach it via the Augustus Bridge - or better still, along the Elbe - and a beautiful baroque vision lines up before you: the art galleries along the Bruhlsche Terrasse, cathedral and castle, circular opera house, and the bridge itself.
The statues along the roofs hint at the riches of Dresden's history. The most glamorous are in gold; the oldest in grey or - thanks to iron in the local sandstone - black; and the white ones are new, testament to post-war reconstruction.
The town dates from the 13th century, but it was Augustus, in his reign from 1694 to 1733, who made it a centre of music and culture. Philanderer, collector and builder, he ruled Protestant Dresden, where Martin Luther was once a vicar, but after changing his religion to acquire the Polish throne as well, he was able to bring back to his northern home a taste for baroque, Roman Catholic culture.
On one of his castle walls is the Procession of Princes, a frieze 100 metres long made of 25,000 tiles depicting 800 years of Saxon rulers: Otto the Rich, Heinrich the Illustrious, Friedrich the Serious, Albrecht the Degenerate. Augustus is two-thirds of the way along, beetle-browed but benevolent.
At the heart of his city is the Zwinger, a pleasure garden with formal lawns, ringed by a sequence of ornate buildings adorned with statues, shields, urns and busts. One houses the city's Old Masters Gallery, with its Rembrandts, Vermeers and Raphael's Sistine Madonna; another is a museum of the porcelain for which Dresden, and Meissen down the Elbe, are known.
On our first evening there, the Zwinger was hosting an open-air operetta. Indeed, in summer the entire old town is a pleasure garden. Jenufa was playing at the Semper opera house, a revue was being performed in a castle courtyard, buskers played accordions and barrel organs on street corners, and on the banks of the Elbe was a rock concert, featuring Vicki Vomit and Cradle of Filth.
Dresden's role as a centre for music has survived better than its buildings. On February 13th, 1945, the town's centre was razed by the RAF. Thousands died in the firestorm created by the bombing. (Kurt Vonnegut's novel Slaughterhouse Five has a chilling account of it.)
It is easy to explain - think of the Blitz, Coventry, V1s and V2s - but harder to justify. The war was nearly over, and the town had no military value; it seems to have been an episode of sheer brutality, and the controversy followed Air Vice Marshal Sir Arthur Harris, who ordered it, to his death and beyond. The fabric of the town may never recover; outside the centre, old baroque soon gives way to modern boring. But nearer the river, some impressive restoration is under way.
Nostalgia is strong - local shops sell books and videos with names like Dresden As It Was, full of black and white pictures of vanished glories, which have come in useful as an aid to rebuilders. Paintings by Canaletto in the Old Masters Gallery have also been used as a guide. (The artist, however, turns out not to be Canaletto but his nephew, Bernardo Bellotto, who borrowed his uncle's name and his minutely detailed style.)
Konigsstrasse, home to posh shops, has been restored, its restrained facades tidied up and painted in pastels. A closer look reveals that a lot of the detail of panels and carving is actually trompe l'oeil work with a paintbrush, as in many of Dresden's older buildings, but it makes the street look as neat as a Canaletto Junior.
The most startling transformation so far is the hotel whose guests we were. The Taschenberg Palace was built by Augustus for his mistress, Constantia von Cosel, about 1710, over the road from his own palace. Augustus the Fickle subsequently dumped her, had to buy the palace back, and imprisoned her for 49 years.
The building, badly damaged in the war, languished for a similar period; the communists never quite got around to levelling or restoring it. Birch trees grew in the pale yellow courtyard where concerts are now held, and birds sang in the presidential suite.
When work finally began in 1993, conservation laws required that it should be returned to the same state inside and out as it was before the RAF arrived. There were arguments about satellite dishes. The rococo chapel remains a bare white art gallery. But it was all achieved with remarkable speed - only two years from ruin to five-star luxury.
The most striking of the buildings in the historic heart of the city is also on its way back up. Until 1945 the Frauenkirche was a cube topped by a dome 100 metres high, dominating every view of Dresden. Reconstruction is proceeding so fast that the target date - 2006, the city's 800th anniversary - should be more than met.
Other restoration work is going ahead. The castle is well on the way to completion, when the royal treasury will return from a temporary home nearby. We watched a drab communist block being bulldozed: fingers crossed, its replacement will fit in better. And the Catholic cathedral is being renewed. Within, in an urn, is the heart of Augustus the Ladies' Man; they say you can hear it beating when a pretty girl passes.