Spectacle, sophistication and salaciousness: My weekend at Dresden's Venetian carnival

So you’re standing in the middle of a city in eastern Germany on a chilly and overcast Saturday morning in early March and suddenly you spot two figures clad entirely in white. Entirely – from their white shoes up to their white masks and their white hats, out of which grow long white feathers. Light ricochets around them, for they are adorned with glinting jewels. Wielding white staffs, they glide towards you in silence.

Beholding such a sight at any other time of year, you might try desperately to think of some worthy last words, or at least wonder if there was something dodgy about last night’s beer. Yet soon the extraordinary becomes oddly ordinary. Here is a medieval baron. Here is a plague doctor. Here is a girl with delicate antlers. It’s simultaneously Dresden and Venice, and simultaneously now and centuries ago. It’s carnival, and tonight we’re gonna party like it’s 1699.

The two cities may not appear to have a great deal in common. They are separated by 600 miles, by religious denomination (Dresden being historically Protestant), by climate, by cuisine (those gondoliers probably don’t scoff much Sauerbraten). But they are tied by history: Dresden was ruled by the impressively named Augustus the Strong from the late 17th century well into the 18th century, and his fondness for art and music led him to embrace Venetian ways. Under his reign, Dresden emerged as a major European city, boasting fine Baroque architecture. Among his imports were aspects of the great Venetian carnival.

It is thus part of Dresden’s history. Yet for many years, history is where it stayed. Carnivals were still held in Dresden, but the event became associated with calamity after the Allies firebombed the city on Shrove Tuesday in 1945. It was not until 2024, following some smaller events in the previous two years, that the Venetian carnival was re-established in full. A hundred people dressed up in traditional costume and took part in various festivities, parading, feasting and dancing.

And if the 2025 carnival is any guide, it will only get bigger. Our carnival weekend began on the Friday night in the city’s opera house, the magnificent Semperoper, for a performance of Der Freischütz by Carl Maria von Weber. Premiered in 1821, it was the first German Romantic opera – an artform later taken to its peak by Richard Wagner – and has profound bonds with Dresden. It was the last work to be staged at the opera house before it was destroyed in 1945, and the first work to be staged there when it reopened 40 years later. Here it was performed with gusto and verve, presented mostly in quite traditional fashion but with some strikingly modern effects, the strange love story with a supernatural dimension ending on a note of hope. Dresden makes remarkably little about its astonishing reconstruction; a casual visitor might never know that this city endured hell. But that note of hope strikes at the soul.

The great gathering of the exotically attired carnivallers took place the following morning. Dozens huddled around a statue of Martin Luther before processing around the city, stopping traffic and turning countless heads. There were some minutes of delightful incongruity as the parade led in to a shopping mall, the past colliding with the present as formal dances took place before sleek storefronts and beneath unforgiving light, courtly chamber music replacing the usual boom-boom-boom. Then further dances outside, in more historical surroundings, with passers-by roped in, puffer jackets alongside fashions rarely seen for 200 years. Many of these garments are works of art: they are typically made by those who wear them, the fabric sometimes costing thousands of pounds, the work sometimes taking most of a year.

And then a stroll through a deeper past, following the costumed hordes through the museums of the Royal Palace. Here are the portrait and grave monument of Elector Moritz, who celebrated the first carnival in Dresden in 1553; here is carnival garb from the 16th century; here are the elaborately decorated rifles used by the nobility for hunting; here is the sumptuously reconstructed small ballroom where royal Saxon celebrations were held in the 19th century; here are sundry exquisite treasures of gold and silver.

And to the evening at the Bilderberg Hotel Bellevue, historic yet swish, where a champagne reception was followed by a buffet of the fanciest style imaginable and then by traditional dancing. A lavish, lush and laughter-filled way to end the day.

But the enjoyment continued. First stop the next day was the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, the Old Masters Gallery. In keeping with Dresden’s history of being immersed in the finest European culture, the gallery houses works by the likes of Titian and, even more spectacularly, Raphael. That painting of his with those mischievous cherubs? It’s called the Sistine Madonna and it stands here, towering and majestic. Here too are those works of the 18th century Venetian Bellotto, his paintings of Dresden hanging near his paintings of Venice, sharing an eye for minute detail and a hand to render it with penetrating vividness.

And what better way to round off a carnival weekend than with ribaldry and excess. Tucked away in one of Dresden's more modest districts is Theatre Carte Blanche, and here modesty dies. An audience spanning the generations lapped up an afternoon of delightfully debauched drag, with many of those costumed carnivallers in attendance. Wild and fun.

It is easy to see Dresden’s Venetian carnival becoming a major draw across Europe and beyond. It's worth getting in before everyone else does.

​Peter was a guest of the German National Tourist Board. He stayed at the Bilderberg Hotel Bellevue and ate at the traditional Saxony restaurant Sophienkeller, the contemporary restaurant Anna and the cabaret theatre Carte Blanche. He flew by Lufthansa from Birmingham via Frankfurt. Visit dresden.de for more information.