[1][6] The zoo is located on the southern edge of the Großer Garten (Great Garden), a large city centre park.

On its northern side is the Zoo station of the Dresdner Parkeisenbahn, a minimum-gauge railway through the Großer Garten that is largely operated by children.

[7][8] At the end of the short story Tobermory (1909) by Saki, the visiting Englishman Cornelius Appin is killed by an elephant at the Dresden Zoological Garden.

In the novel Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (2005) by Jonathan Safran Foer, Thomas Schell is told to shoot all of the carnivores that had escaped from their cages during Dresden's bombing of World War II.

[9] In 1859, at the suggestion of the Dresden "Association for Chicken Breeding", a committee was formed which, in collaboration with the city administration, initiated the establishment of a zoo.