As an overview, this is supposed to be a world-class museum summarizing the history of the German…read moremilitary. Perhaps analogize this museum to a Smithsonian in the U.S. The musuem's website boasts: "The Bundeswehr Museum of Military History in Dresden is one of the three major historical museums in Germany, as well as one of the most innovative military museums in the world." But from a museum management and facilities perspective, this museum is a national embarrassment to Germany. Why? Because the museum has completely inadequate lighting. During our visit, the lights were completely turned off in the 1300-1914 exhibit for the first two hours. We literally had to use our phone as flashlights to read anything. The overall the lighting is bad in other areas where the lights were on. The museum website should openly tell people the museum lacks lighting and visitors should bring their own flashlights. If the lighting had been working, I would have given this museum 5 stars. But I rate museums based on actual experience, not aspirational wants. Getting past the lighting fiasco, the museum's chronological coverage of German military history is logical and well-developed. Seeing WWI and WWII through another historical lens is always interesting (as an aside, I strongly recommend the Yasukuni Shrine and its war museum Yūshūkan in Tokyo for an interesting perspective on WWII). Concerning some of the more detailed exhibits, we consistently encountered exhibits with no design and forethought. For example, in one area with vertical pullouts concerning varying views on Napoleon, the pullouts would not extend far enough out to see the whole exhibit. In other areas, videos did not play. I was shocked by the non-functional displays and backwardness in this museum. On the positive side, some of the displays were truly unique including the display on animals used by militaries. Consider skipping the displays on floor 3. Floor 3 has the strangest, tightly spaced, ridiculous vertical displays I've even seen anywhere. Overall cleanliness: Excellent Bathroom cleanliness: Excellent Snack bar: closed when we visited Viewing station of downtown Dresden: impaired visibility due to the building design but worth a quick peek. Time budget: minimum 3-4 hours

NOTE: bring a flash light to see the displays…read more Arrival: this is far from the Dresden city center, but we took the tram here. Google assisted and we were able to take tram 7 here. It was 9 stops and took roughly 23 minutes to arrive. It was an easy walk from the tram to the museum. It was lightly snowing on the walk over. It is a neat modern/classic building that is very nice to look at. The top has a look out of Dresden, but the railing and roof system makes it very hard to see the view. Negatives: 1. there is a sign posted at the museum ticket counter that was a bit odd. It said they do not have replacement bulbs, I thought it was odd. The museum displays more than half have no bulbs. So bring a flashlight or be prepared to use your phone to light the displays because the displays are mounted on black material and in the morning with no sunlight you cannot read anything. There are windows, but they are permanently closed. 2. There is no WiFi. 3. Anything with an interactive video monitor does not work. This is a wonderful military museum with a great deal of history to read and there is a lot of reading to be done while at this museum. The font is a bit small so be prepared to squint in the dark if you don't have a flashlight or in some displays you cannot read anything at all. There are some odd ways of displaying items in the museum, like vertical parallel displays that you have to squeeze between people to look at in the dark with very narrow openings. The museum has military items from paintings, books, clothing, propaganda, children toys, and how each member of the family and including animals were used during the war. There is a coat room to put your coat for storage so you don't have to take it along with you. The museum is quite hot. Cafe: closed Bathrooms: above average cleanliness Cleanliness: above average

Very good museum displaying different kinds of transport with cool photos and models of cars,…read morebuggy's, trains, etc. I enjoyed this a lot. It a realtively small museum with 2 levels and should take about 30-45 minutes to visit. Some of the displays did not have English (some did) descriptions. A good place to visit if you find this type of subject matter interesting.