Busmannkapelle

The Busmannkapelle is the fragmented memorial of a side chapel of Dresden's Gothic Sophienkirche, for centuries the city's only medieval parish church. The Busmann patrician family endowed the chapel around 1400 as a burial and family chapel for the Dresden Franciscan friary. Its figural keystones and corbels are the earliest sculpted work documented in the city and are displayed today partly in the city museum. The Sophienkirche and the chapel were destroyed in 1945 and, despite citizen protest, blown up in 1962. Since 2009 a glass and steel pavilion on the western edge of Postplatz marks the site and exhibits the salvaged fragments. It is a rare encounter with medieval Dresden, otherwise lost beneath the baroque cityscape.