Picturesque located at the Elbe, the town can look back on a more than 1000 year old history. The founder was the German king Heinrich I, who has build a castle near the Elbe during his campaign against the Slavs in 929.

Through the assignation of a margrave in 965 and the establishment of a bishopric in 968, Meissen became a military and administration centre. After Fridrich IV.’s promotion to elector in 1423, Meissen became the elector’s centre of Saxony. The unique gothic dome and the first German castle, the late gothic “Albrechtsburg”, remind us about these times.

Starting in the 10th century the town around the castle started developing. The area which is now the “Theaterplatz” became a place of rest and business. In the 11th century German and Jewish merchants settled down at the so called “Neumarkt” and in 1150 they built a systematic town around the market.

Thanks to the well build road system between Leipzig and Prague and the great demand for handcraft products, which increased because of the newly built villages around the area, the town economy started blooming.

In 1543 St. Afgra Saxony Margrave’s school was founded, and thanks to that Meissen had a leading percentage of humane educated in the region.

After the “Thirty Years War”, Meissen fell in long-term stagnation. Only after the building of the Porcelain manufactory in 1710, the economy started growing again.

Only interrupted by the years of war in the 18th and 19th century, 1834 a new economical boom for the town started. First industrial firms opened up, 1835 the first steamboats started booting and in 1860 the town got connected to the railway network. Meissen developed itself to a centre of Saxony’s ceramic industry and enlarged its urban area by integration of small municipies from the right side of the Elbe.
During the two World Wars, Meissen stood out of heavy bombarding. In the years 1949- 1989 the development of the town was deriged by the ideological and financial need of the GDR. Because of this, new apartment blocks were built in the suburbs, but also the historical heart of the city had to suffer from this.