Many boroughs west of the Elbe lie in the Ore Mountain Foreland, as well as in the valleys of the rivers rising there and flowing through Dresden, the longest of which are the Weißeritz and the Lockwitzbach.

Dresden has a long history as the capital and royal residence for the Electors and Kings of Saxony, who for centuries furnished the city with cultural and artistic splendor, and was once by personal union the family seat of Polish monarchs.

The controversial American and British bombing of Dresden towards the end of World War II killed approximately 25,000 people, most of whom were civilians, and destroyed the entire city centre.

According to the Hamburg Institute of International Economics (HWWI) and Berenberg Bank in 2019, Dresden had the seventh best prospects for the future of all cities in Germany.

[11] Dresden's founding and early growth is associated with the eastward expansion of Germanic peoples,[10] mining in the nearby Ore Mountains, and the establishment of the Margraviate of Meissen.

Following the Polish uprisings of 1831, 1848 and 1863 many Poles fled to Dresden, including the artistic and political elite, such as composer Frédéric Chopin, war hero Józef Bem and writer Adam Mickiewicz.

[23] The uprising forced Frederick Augustus II of Saxony to flee from Dresden, but he soon after regained control over the city with the help of Prussia.

In the following years, the city became a major centre of economy, including motor car production, food processing, banking and the manufacture of medical equipment.

[30] During the German invasion of Poland at the start of World War II, in September 1939, the Gestapo carried out mass arrests of local Polish activists.

[31] Other non-Jews were also targeted, and over 1,300 people were executed by the Nazis at the Münchner Platz, a courthouse in Dresden, including labour leaders, undesirables, resistance fighters and anyone caught listening to foreign radio broadcasts.

[44][45] Following his military service the German press photographer and photojournalist Richard Peter returned to Dresden and began to document the ruined city.

[46] When a skeleton previously used as a model for drawing art classes was found in the ruins of the Dresden Art Academy, the photographer Edmund Kesting with the assistance of Peter posed it in a number of different locations to produce a series of haunting photographic images to give the impression that Death was wandering through the city in search of the dead.

The damage from the Allied air raids was so extensive that following the end of the Second World War, a narrow gauge light railway system was constructed to remove the debris, though being makeshift there were frequent derailments.

Local activists and residents joined in the growing civil disobedience movement spreading across the German Democratic Republic, by staging demonstrations and demanding the removal of the communist government.

The urban renewal process, which includes the reconstruction of the area around the Neumarkt square on which the Frauenkirche is situated, was expected to take decades, but numerous large projects were under way in the first part of the 21st century.

Each year on 13 February, the anniversary of the British and American fire-bombing raid that destroyed most of the city, tens of thousands of demonstrators gather to commemorate the event.

Beginning in 1999, right-wing Neo-Nazi white nationalist groups have organised demonstrations in Dresden that have been among the largest of their type in the post-war history of Germany.

The incorporation of neighbouring rural communities over the past 60 years has made Dresden the fourth largest urban district by area in Germany after Berlin, Hamburg and Cologne.

[65] The population of Dresden grew to 100,000 inhabitants in 1852, making it one of the first German cities after Hamburg, Berlin and Breslau (Wrocław) to reach that number.

[84] Starting in October 2014, PEGIDA, a nationalistic political movement based in Dresden has been organizing weekly demonstrations against what it perceives as the Islamization of Europe at the height of the European migrant crisis.

[89] Dresden and Coventry became twins after World War II in an act of reconciliation, as both had suffered near-total destruction from massive aerial bombings.

Important modernist buildings erected between 1945 and 1990 are the Centrum-Warenhaus (a large department store), representing the international Style, and the multi-purpose hall Kulturpalast.

[110] Other artists, such as Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Otto Dix, Oskar Kokoschka, Richard Strauss, Gottfried Semper and Gret Palucca, were also active in the city.

[9] A big event each year in June is the Bunte Republik Neustadt,[115] a culture festival lasting three days in the city district of Dresden-Neustadt.

The art collections consist of twelve museums, including the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister (Old Masters Gallery) and the Grünes Gewölbe (Green Vault) and the Japanese Palace (Japanisches Palais).

[127] DVB provides a night service named GuteNachtLinie ('goodnight lines'), which operates Monday-Sunday, although the frequency of the buses is greater on Friday, Saturday and before holidays when the routes run every 30 minutes between 22:45 and 04:45.

[130] In March 2001, a new terminal building was opened along with the underground S-Bahn station Dresden Flughafen, a multi-storey car park and a new aircraft handling ramp.

After reunification enterprises and production sites broke down almost completely as they entered the social market economy, facing competition from the Federal Republic of Germany.

Major enterprises today include AMD's semiconductor fabrication spin-off GlobalFoundries, Infineon Technologies, ZMDI and Toppan Photomasks.

[citation needed] Dresden is home to a number of renowned universities, but among German cities it is a more recent location for academic education.