Dresden is the capital city of the Free State of Saxony in Germany. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe, near the Czech border. The Dresden conurbation is part of the Saxon Triangle metropolitan area.

Dresden has a long history as the capital and royal residence for the Electors and Kings of Saxony, who for centuries furnished the city with cultural and artistic splendour. The city was completely destroyed by the controversial Allied aerial bombing towards the end of World War II. The impact of the bombing and 40 years of urban development during the East German socialist era have considerably changed the face of the city. Some restoration work has helped to reconstruct parts of the historic inner city, including the Katholische Hofkirche, the Semperoper and the Dresdner Frauenkirche. Since the German reunification in 1990, Dresden has re-emerged as a cultural, educational, political and economic centre of Germany.

The Elbe Valley of Dresden was an internationally recognised site of cultural significance by the UNESCO World Heritage Committee for five years. After being placed on the list of endangered World Heritage Sites in 2006, the city had its status as world heritage site formally removed in June 2009, for the wilful breach of the UNESCO World Heritage Convention, due to the construction of a highway bridge across the valley within 2 km of the historic centre. It thereby became the first location ever in Europe to lose this status, and the second ever in the world.

Universities
Dresden is home to a number of renowned universities, but among German cities it is a more recent location for academic education.
The Technische Universität Dresden with almost 35,000 students (2004) was founded in 1828 and is among the oldest and largest Universities of Technology in Germany. It is currently the university of technology in Germany with the largest number of students but also has many courses in social studies, economics and other non-technical sciences. It offers 126 courses.
The Technische Universität Dresden founded a Kids-University in 2004.
The Hochschule für Technik und Wirtschaft was founded in 1992 and had about 5,300 students in 2005.
The Hochschule für Bildende Künste Dresden was founded in 1764 and is known for its former professors and artists such as George Grosz, Sascha Schneider, Otto Dix, Oskar Kokoschka, Bernardo Bellotto, Carl-Gustav Carus, Caspar David Friedrich and Gerhard Richter.
The Palucca School of Dance was founded by Gret Palucca in 1935 and is a major European school of free dance.
The Carl Maria von Weber College of Music was founded in 1856.

Other universities include the "Hochschule für Kirchenmusik", a school specialising in church music, the "Evangelische Hochschule für Sozialarbeit", an education institution for social work. The "Dresden International University" is a private postgraduate university, founded a few years ago in cooperation with the Dresden University of Technology.

The Capital of Germany is the city state of Berlin. It is the seat of the President of Germany, whose official residence is Schloss Bellevue. The Bundesrat ("federal council") is the representation of the Federal States (Bundesländer) of Germany and has its seat at the former Prussian Herrenhaus (House of Lords). Though most of the ministries are seated in Berlin, some of them, as well as some minor departments, are seated in Bonn, the former capital of West Germany.

Pre-1871
Up until 1871, Germany was not a unified nation state, and had no capital city. Already the Medieval Holy Roman Empire of which parts evolved into modern Germany had had no capital, considering itself rather as a confederation of varied territories of which some were German while others were not.

After the Congress of Vienna created the formal German Confederation in 1815, a Federal Assembly convened at the Free City of Frankfurt, representing not the people of the individual German Lands but their sovereigns. Subsequently, Frankfurt briefly became the official German capital during the short-lived Revolutions of 1848 in the German states.

Since 1871
It was only during the 1871 Unification of Germany that the unified nation state of the German Empire first was assigned an official capital. With Prussia as the dominant part of the unified Germany, its capital Berlin was chosen, and remained so until the end of World War II. However, for a period of a few months following the First World War, the national assembly met in Weimar instead due to civil war ravaging Berlin. In 1945, Germany was occupied by the Allies as the outcome of WWII, and Berlin only remained a capital de jure.

In 1949, with sovereignty regained the country split up into West Germany (Federal Republic of Germany), with the capital of Bonn, and East Germany (German Democratic Republic), with the capital of East Berlin. In 1990, the unified Berlin became the capital of the unified Federal Republic of Germany per the unification treaty, while Bonn remained the seat of government until 1999.