Is Moritzburg Castle worth visiting?
What works
- A bed and wall hangings carrying about a million bird feathers, back on show since 2003 after a nineteen-year restoration
- 71 antler trophies in the dining room, including the heaviest red deer antler in the world at 19.8 kilograms
- A baroque building standing in the middle of a lake that was engineered to put it there
- A HistoPad included with the baroque ticket rather than sold beside it
- Fifteen kilometres from Dresden, by bus or by narrow-gauge steam railway
Worth knowing
- The building holds one exhibition at a time and swaps them twice a year, so half the castle’s reputation is out of reach on any given date
- It is shut completely from 2 to 19 November
- The Fasanenschlösschen takes thirty visitors a day, Thursday to Sunday, in season only
- The scavenger hunt, the one listing that is Moritzburg and nothing else, is in German only
- Two of the six listings that reach the castle have no rating on the platform yet
Coming out from Dresden?The castle sells its own admission at its own counter, so what is worth booking ahead is the ride: a guided day that carries the ticket for you, or a car from Prague. Every one of them cancels free up to 24 hours before, and one of the six is Moritzburg and nothing else.
See the ways out thereWho it is for
Anyone who likes baroque interiors that still hold the objects they were built for, anyone with a weakness for absurd engineering — four ponds flooded into one so that a hunting lodge could stand on water, a brick lighthouse in the flattest part of Saxony — and a very large number of people from central Europe for whom this building is Cinderella’s castle and has been since 1973. Those are three different visits and they do not all happen in the same month.
Who it is not for
Somebody with one afternoon in Dresden and a list of twenty things. Moritzburg is a half day with a journey at each end, and it does not reward being squeezed. If the afternoon is all you have, the honest advice is to keep it in the city and come back for this on a day you can give it. How long it actually wants.
The ticket costs the same all year. What changes is the castle behind it.
What the reviewers say about the journey
The listings are rated on the ride rather than the castle, and the bases are small: 3 reviews on the guided Dresden day, 12 on the scavenger hunt, 6 on the private Prague car, 1 on the Prague day trip, and no rating at all yet on the van tour or the Prague ticket pair. Wesley, from the United States, wrote that his guide on the Dresden day was excellent in every way. Monika, from South Africa, said her Prague driver was patient and on time. Those are useful and they are also four or five people. All of the reviews.
The castle sells its own admission at its own counter and on schloss-moritzburg.de. There is no Moritzburg entry ticket on GetYourGuide, so nothing on this site is a substitute for that counter. What the platform sells is the journey, and two of the six listings that reach Moritzburg carry a castle ticket inside the day: the guided day from Dresden and the private Prague car that pairs Moritzburg with the Zwinger.
The listing I would book if I were coming from Dresden
Eight hours, a live guide in English, French, German or Italian, Meißen and the porcelain museum, the Moritzburg admission named in the inclusions and the day’s public transport covered. Per group of up to ten, around four hundred and twenty euros, rated 4.6 from 3 reviews. The six compared.
Frequently asked questions
Is Moritzburg Castle worth a visit?
Yes, if you come on a date when the exhibition you want is the one in the building. The feather room and the antler dining room run 20 March to 1 November; the Cinderella exhibition runs 20 November to 28 February.
Is Moritzburg better than the castles in Dresden itself?
It is different rather than better: a hunting seat on a lake, fifteen kilometres out, with two rooms nothing in the city can match. What else is within reach.
How many reviews do the Moritzburg tours have?
Few. Twelve on the scavenger hunt, six on the private Prague car, three on the guided Dresden day, one on the Prague day trip, and none at all on the van tour or the Prague ticket pair.