Pillnitz is a city quarter in the east of Dresden, Germany. The best known sight of this quarter is the Japanese-styled chateau. The quarter is situated in the east of Dresden, a rather long way from the inner city. It can be reached by bus, ship, walking along the river or by bicycle. The park around the castle was founded in 1539 by building the castle church. In 1693 Elector John George IV of Saxony acquired the palace as a present to his mistress Magdalena Sibylla of Neidschutz. Both died in the following years and in 1706 John George’s brother Augustus II the Strong passed the facilities as a gift to Anna Constantia of Brockdorff, one of his numerous women, only to retract it after Anna Constantia had fled to Berlin in 1715.
From 1720 the first church was replaced and the buildings were replaced by elaborate Baroque palaces designed by Matthäus Daniel Pöppelmann and Zacharias Longuelune. The construction continued until 1725, giving the facilities a kind of Chinese style, nevertheless Augustus soon lost interest in his new palace. In 1765 Elector Frederick Augustus I of Saxony made Pillnitz his summer residence. The 1791 Declaration of Pillnitz made European history: Emperor Leopold II and King Frederick William II of Prussia, urged by Charles X, then Comte d’Artois, declared that the French King Louis XVI was not to be harmed or deprived of power as a way to attack the progress of the French Revolution. In France this was seen as a declaration of war.
In the castle park there are, for example, an orangery and a famous camellia tree that maybe Carl Peter Thunberg brought from Kyoto to Kew Gardens in 1776. The tree planted in 1801 reaches a height of 8.6 m (28 ft) and in spring shows up to 35,000 blooms. The park features a lot of other unusual plants, a Chinese and an English pavilion, the New Palais built between 1819 and 1826 for Frederick Augustus I as well as smaller museums about royalty and industrial life in Dresden.
