The typical German station district with a concentration of hotels, restaurants, a post office, banks and shops has not developed around it.

To the east there is an open development with numerous villa-style buildings, while to the west there are factories and dense housing estates in the Leipziger Vorstadt.

The two-part station consists of the train shed, which is at an elevation of 6.35 metres, and the entrance building, which is at street level and faces Schlesische Platz.

The entrance building was largely built of sandstone under the direction of Otto Peters and Osmar Dürichen and is dominated by the lobby.

The coats of arms of the Kingdom of Saxony and the city of Dresden and paintings adorn the brightly coloured walls and ceilings.

Today food stalls offering snacks are located on the street side and a travel centre lies opposite them and a pharmacy is next to it.

[3] As part of an economic stimulus program announced in November 2008, the entrance building was rehabilitated by DB Station&Service AG to promote energy efficiency.

In 2002, this was converted to a single-track connecting curve that branched from the northeastern part of the station toward Neustadt freight yard; this existed until 2005.

Between the connecting curve and the northern approach to the station are disused facilities of the former Dresden-Neustadt locomotive depot (Lokbahnhof).

The rapid growth of traffic and connections to the newly built railway lines made major expansions and renovations and the construction of new buildings necessary in the first decades after its opening.

The Schlesischen Bahnhof was built between 1844 and 1847 under the direction and to the design of the Dresden architect Julius Köhler and was opened with its ground-level tracks along with the whole Dresden-Neustadt–Görlitz line on 1 September 1847.

The double-sided and symmetrically arranged station building consisted of two protruding wings and a recessed central section.

The departure platforms could only be accessed through an entrance hall, which contained a ticket office, baggage acceptance facilities and restaurants.

In addition, the many level crossings were creating significant traffic problems by the late 1880s when all the railway companies serving Dresden had been nationalised.

It was decided to implement a profound transformation of the Dresden railway node under the auspices of Otto Klette, the commissioner of works (Baurat).

[8] From 1936 to 1939, the Henschel-Wegmann Train operated from Dresden Hauptbahnhof to the Anhalter Bahnhof in Berlin, covering the route in about 100 minutes.

The last heavy bombing of Dresden on 17 April 1945, which was mainly aimed at transport facilities that were still intact after the 13 February raid, caused severe damage to the station, particularly in the area around the north-eastern exit.

On 21 January 1942, a train left the station with unheated freight cars and 224 Jews from the administrative district of Dresden-Bautzen, reaching the Riga Ghetto four days later.

A year later, on 3 March 1943, 293 Jews from Dresden were deported on another train to the Auschwitz concentration camp[10] A memorial plaque on the right entrance of Dresden-Neustadt station is a reminder of this function of Neustadt freight yard Reconstruction began soon after the war.

This resulted in considerable restrictions on the order of operations and required that several trains at a time had to be cleared to run in each direction.

[12] Today a car rental service uses the area next to the former loading ramp which lies to the east of the station building next to the parking facilities.

It is designed from a purely functional point of view and does not correspond to the architecture of the train shed or the old operations building.

The lobby received a modern translucent roof and an Art Nouveau (Jugendstil) painting in ochre and green tones, which had been rediscovered in 1997 under layers of plaster, was reconstructed.

In addition, the second-largest image ever made in Meissen porcelain (after the Fürstenzug) is now displayed on an inner wall of the entrance building.

The Meissen porcelain factory created the 90 square-metre mural of 900 tiles designed by the painters Horst Brettschneider and Heinz Werner.

From 1994, Intercity-Express trains ran to Dresden for the first time, stopping until September 1998 in Dresden-Neustadt station, where four platforms were increased temporarily to a height of 55 centimetres above the rail to accommodate them.

Due to the extensive construction at the station, the EuroCity train on the Berlin-Dresden-Prague route did not stop at Dresden-Neustadt from the timetable change on 13 December 2009 until the end of 2013.

In mid-2006,[17] extensive renovation work began to remodel the station approaches including a change in the track layout and renewal of several bridges and two flying junctions.

[2] Dresden-Neustadt station gives long-distance trains access to the northern part of Dresden and to other towns like Radebeul, Radeberg, Kamenz and Coswig.

[22] From the outset, Dresden-Neustadt station was served by the tram network of the Dresdner Verkehrsbetriebe (Dresden Transport) or its predecessor organisations.