# Alte Zionskirche

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Canonical page: https://mytuur.com/en/city/dresden/spot/alte-zionskirche/

Content updated: 2026-06-22

Alte Zionskirche stands in Dresden’s Südvorstadt as an Evangelical Lutheran church shaped by Jugendstil architecture. Schilling & Graebner built the sandstone structure between 1908 and 1912, giving it a richly ornamented, 50-metre copper tower.

Inside, fan-shaped pews created an amphitheatre-like arrangement for 1,100 people, alongside a bronze pulpit and white marble altar cross. J. Ehmlich’s organ became Saxony’s first instrument with fully electric action and registration. Bombing in February 1945 destroyed the church down to its masonry, leaving the architectural shell behind. A temporary roof later covered the site, which serves as a lapidarium containing 3,000 sculptures.

The parish continued in a Swedish Church barrack until Neue Zionskirche opened in 1982. Three thousand sculptures now occupy the surviving walls, where the ruined structure frames Dresden’s wartime history.

- City: [Dresden](https://mytuur.com/en/city/dresden/)

## Photos

- ![](https://mytuur-bucket.s3.amazonaws.com/image_AlteZionskirche_67eb94b05015e5763969621a_0.jpg) — [Image: wikimedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:AlteZionskirche.jpg)
- ![](https://mytuur-bucket.s3.amazonaws.com/image_AlteZionskirche_67eb94b05015e5763969621a_1.jpg) — [Image: wikimedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:AlteZionskirche-Detail.jpg)
- ![](https://mytuur-bucket.s3.amazonaws.com/image_AlteZionskirche_67eb94b05015e5763969621a_2.jpg) — [Image: wikimedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NeueZionskirche.jpg)
- ![](https://mytuur-bucket.s3.amazonaws.com/image_AlteZionskirche_67eb94b05015e5763969621a_3.jpg) — [Image: wikimedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ZwingerCrown.jpg)

Spots like this one are the stops myTuur strings into tours through Dresden. In the app, each story begins where you stand: walk up to a spot and it starts, read it on screen or listen as you go, then follow the route to the next one.

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