As you may have guessed by its name, the Old Master's Picture Gallery houses over 750 paintings by the Old Masters.

When I say masters I mean it. We’re talking about the big leagues here, the kind of guys that Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtles are named after. The collection includes pieces by Titian, Vermeer, Rembrandt, Rubens, and (of course) Raphael. 

Technically not its own museum, the gallery is part of a larger Gallery (the Semper) which is part of a larger palace compound (the Zwinger). Confused yet? I don’t blame you. So the Zwinger is actually a Rococo style Dresden palace completed in 1728. Zwinger translates roughly into “killing ground” and refers to the space between a castle’s inner and outer walls. As terrifying as this seems the area was used as a garden for the Dresden Court (Miester, will you be taking your tea in the killing grounds today?). The Semper was built in 1838 to close off the killing ground's Zwinger courtyard by architect Gottfried Semper. Semper was friends with composer Richard Wagner and together they stood at the barricades with grenades during the May 1848 Dresden Uprising. The Zwinger is a palace, part of which is the Semper Gallery and inside that Gallery is the Old Master’s Picture Gallery (created in 1855). Got it?

When Dresden was bombed on February 13, 1945 the Semper was severely damaged. But fear not! Those smart museum folk anticipated the strike and most of the paintings had already been moved for safe-keeping. The paintings may have been saved from fire, but their keeper’s foresight couldn’t save them from the Red Army.  Some 713 paintings were destroyed or confiscated at the end of the war and despite the building being remodeled and reopened in 1960, 450 pieces are still believed missing. 

Visit the gallery Tuesday- Sunday from 10 a.m to 6 p.m. Make sure to pay a visit to the museum’s most famous piece Raphael’s Sistine Madonna and say hi to the cheeky cherub twins who are too cool for Mary and Jesus.