The Dresdner Frauenkirche ("Church of Our Lady") is a Lutheran church in Dresden, Germany. Several other churches in Europe, both Roman Catholic and Protestant, also share the name of Frauenkirche.

The Dresden Frauenkirche was destroyed in the firebombing of Dresden during World War II and has been reconstructed as a landmark symbol of reconciliation between former warring enemies. The reconstruction of its exterior was completed in 2004, its interior in 2005 and after 13 years of rebuilding, the church was reconsecrated on 30 October 2005 with festive services lasting through the Protestant observance of Reformation Day on 31 October.

The Frauenkirche was built as a Lutheran (Protestant) cathedral, even though Saxony's elector, Frederick August I (1670-1733), was Catholic.

The original baroque church was built between 1726 and 1743 and was designed by Dresden's city architect George Bähr (1666-1738), one of the greatest masters of German Baroque style, who did not live to see the completion of his greatest work. Bähr's distinctive design for the church captured the new spirit of the Protestant liturgy by placing the altar, chancel, and baptismal font directly centered in view of the entire congregation.

In 1736, famed organ maker Gottfried Silbermann (1683-1753) built a three-manual, 43-stop instrument for the church. The organ was dedicated on 25 November and Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) gave a recital on the instrument on 1 December.

The church's most distinctive feature was its unconventional 314-foot-high dome, called die Steinerne Glocke or "Stone Bell". An engineering triumph comparable to Michelangelo's dome for St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, the Frauenkirche's 12,000-ton sandstone dome soared skyward with no internal supports. Despite initial doubts, the dome proved to be extremely stable. Witnesses in 1760 said that the dome had been hit by more than 100 cannonballs fired by the Prussian army led by Friedrich II during the Seven Years' War. The projectiles simply bounced off and the church survived.

The completed church gave the city of Dresden a distinctive silhouette, captured in famous paintings (see above) by Bernado Bellotto, a nephew to the artist Canaletto and also known by the same name.

In 1849 the church was at the heart of the revolutionary disturbances known as the May Uprising. The Frauenkirche was surrounded by barricades, and fierce fighting raged for days before those rebels who had not already fled were rounded up in the church and arrested.

For more than 200 years, the magnificent bell-shaped dome stood monumentally and gracefully over the skyline of old Dresden, dominating the city.

[Source: Wikipedia]

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