The Großer Garten — Great Garden — is Dresden's main park and one of the oldest Baroque gardens in Germany, laid out from 1676 onward as a pleasure ground for the Saxon court. It covers 1.8 square kilometres in the southern part of the city between the Albertinum and the Hygiene Museum, and it functions today as a public park, a zoo, and a venue for summer concerts and events.
The park is laid out around a long central axis, at the end of which stands the Palais im Großen Garten — a small Baroque summer palace from 1683, the first purpose-built pleasure palace in Saxony and one of the oldest surviving Baroque buildings in Dresden. The palace interior can be visited in summer.
The Dresdner Zoo occupies the eastern corner of the park, with a large collection of big cats, primates, and African animals. The Parkeisenbahn — the miniature railway — runs a 5.6-kilometre circuit through the park on 457mm gauge track, operated almost entirely by children under adult supervision as a long-running GDR-era training programme. The trains are small but real, with working signals and a proper timetable; it's been running since 1950.
The park is excellent for cycling and walking, and in summer the lawns host outdoor film screenings and concerts. The rose garden near the central axis is at its best in June.