George Bähr, Dresden's city architect, designed the Frauenkirche, a Baroque Lutheran parish church. The foundation stone was laid on August 26, 1726, and the church was built between 1726 and 1743. Bähr died before it was finished. Its sandstone dome, of about 12,000 tons and called the Stone Bell, rests on eight slender supports and is listed at 220 feet (67 m).
During the Allied bombing of February 1945, the church withstood two days of attacks before incendiary bombs heated it to about 1,000 °C. The dome collapsed at 10 a.m. on February 15. Residents had salvaged and numbered stones, and the ruins were declared a memorial against war in 1966.
Reconstruction ran from 1994 to 2005 and cost €180 million. About 3,800 of the 8,500 salvaged original stones were reused. The church was reconsecrated on October 30, 2005. It is a working parish church with daily services, and about seven million people visited in its first three years.
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