Dresden - the wounded, healed, transformed city. Long since a legend in literature and subject to changing world heritage status, Elbflorenz remains very much alive. Writers who were born in Dresden or lived there over the past fifty years, such as Viktor Klemperer, Volker Braun, Heinz Czechowski, Durs Grünbein, Ingo Schulze, Wulf Kirsten, Thomas Rosenlöcher, Marcel Beyer, Christian Lehnert, and Roman Israel, explore a myth. They tell stories about the city, the Elbe landscapes, night thoughts and steamship noodles, the great flood and the new Frauenkirche, visitors and passersby, the untouchable Sistine Madonna by Raphael and the very approachable Venus by Giorgione. In his afterword, Detlev Schöttker outlines Dresden's rich literary tradition and relates it to the present.