Dresden Hauptbahnhof (Dresden Central Station), Dresden

The Dresden Hauptbahnof is one of the two main railway stations in the city. The station is a historic building built in the late nineteenth century that was badly damaged by the Dresden bombing in 1945. Little was done to maintain and restore the structure during the communist period. The station has been redesigned, modernized and restored to accommodate the railway traffic of today.

The Dresden Hauptbahnof and the Dresden Neustadt are the two main railway hubs of the city. The Dresden Hauptbahnof train station was designed and built between 1892 and 1897 by architects, Ernst Giese and Paul Wiedner. It replaced three stations located in the south of Dresden. Trains from the station connected Berlin, Prague and Nuremberg. When the station opened its doors, it also opened avenues of growth and prosperity for the city. The modern reconstructed building that replaced the war damaged structure has a large Teflon coated fiberglass roof but retains its old façade. It won the 2006 Stirling Prize and the 2007 IstructE award for heritage buildings.

There are 19 railway tracks in the building distributed between two floors. Eleven of the tracks carry traffic through the station while the remaining eight terminate in the building. There is a central hall in the lower level and two halls in the upper floor. The structure is a unique architectural endeavor to make the old blend in with the new.