Dresden architecture and numerous world-renowned museums and art collections, Dresden has been called "Elbflorenz" (Florence of the Elbe). The incorporation of neighbouring rural communities over the past 60 years has made Dresden the twelfth largest urban district by area in Germany after Berlin, Hamburg and Cologne. The nearest German cities are Chemnitz to the southwest, Leipzig to the northwest and Berlin to the north. Prague, Czech Republic is about to the south and to the east is the Polish city of Wrocław. Dresden is one of the greenest cities in all of Europe, with 63% of the city being green areas
The Destruction of Dresden "Wie Deutschlands Städte starben" ("How Germany's Cities Died") which Irving wrote for the German journal "Neue Illustrierte". In the first edition, Irving estimated that the two RAF raids and the first USAAF raid combined were "estimated authoritatively to have killed more than 135,000 of the population [of Dresden]..." and the "documentation suggests very strongly that the figure was certainly between a minimum of 100,000 and a maximum of 250,000". In 1965, General Ira C. Eaker identified the number as 135,000. Irving's first edition figures became widely accepted and were used in many standard reference works. In later editions of the