For many of us the very name of Dresden conjures up a range of emotions, particularly sadness. On the night of February 13, 1945, the RAF fire-bombed this beautiful city, sometimes called the Florence of the North, and the USAF followed up the raid with blanket heavy bombing.

About 25,000 civilians were killed and 90 per cent of the Baroque city centre was destroyed.

Even catching the Lufthansa scheduled plane from Heathrow reminded me that I was following in the air trail of those bombers. But despite all that, I found visiting Dresden to be a far from a backward-looking, woeful thing to do.

Instead, such a visit encourages hope for the future coupled with a restored confidence in our own age — since much of the city has risen again from the ashes and has been so well built that it is hard to tell what is old and what is new.

Now the city, which is in the former east zone, south of Berlin, has once again become one of the most visited in Germany. And that state of affairs is thanks largely to Dresden’s burgeoning conference trade.

I went there as a guest of Maritim Hotels, which, with 37 hotels, has grown into Germany’s largest hotel chain over the last 25 years by using the simple expedient of combining hotel and conference facilities — along with such comforts as saunas, swimming pools, and fitness centres.

In Dresden the 330-room hotel has been cleverly built into a former warehouse on the banks of the river Elbe, alongside a gleaming modern conference centre, owned by the city authority — which can accommodate conferences of almost any size up to 6,800 delegates.

Its room space is designed to be flexible and when I turned up movable walls had been arranged to accommodate a conference of 850 delegates in the main congress room.

Certainly, were I a conference organiser I would be inspired by this place. The views through the sheer glass walls of the centre and from its terrace, are of the old city — and somehow they tell an optimistic story of Europe at its best: clean, modern design overlooking towers and domes that attest to the ability of the present age to rebuild the best of the past.

The melding of old and new is the leitmotif of Dresden. In the morning I took time off to see the old Royal Palace, built in the early 18th Century, for August I, Elector of Saxony and later King of Poland.

His family badge was the crossed swords which to this day can be found on genuine Meissen porcelain and these crossed swords set in stone adorn the fantastic, wedding-cake of a building that is the pavilion of the Royal palace — a far more ornate edifice than our own comparatively tame version of the Baroque style to be found, for instance, at Blenheim Palace, which was built at about the same time.

I was reminded of Blenheim because the Dresden Royal palace now houses one of Europe’s best collections of Dresden porcelain and of Meissen porcelain too, made nearby.

And as some visitors to Blenheim will remember there is a great collection of Meissen there — which was given to the third Duke of Marlborough by August I in exchange for a couple of bloodhounds.

The huge collection of porcelain at Dresden was not destroyed by the bombers since the Nazis had moved it for safe-keeping to a castle in the beautiful wine-producing Saxony countryside outside the city.

The modern design sits well alongside the old and the reconstructed old in Dresden.

For example, the Volkswagen factory, about ten minutes taxi ride from the Maritim Hotel, is entirely made of glass.

It is called Die Gläserne Manufaktur and was gleaming in the sun like a huge crystal on the day I visited. The top-of-the range Phaeton has been assembled here since 2001 and would-be buyers come along to see how their car is being built; transparency in everything being the message VW wants to convey.

The whole process struck me as about as close as you will ever come to having a car tailor made — or bespoke as it used to be called. And so it should, perhaps, with Phaeton prices starting at about £60,000.

German car factories have certainly changed since I last visited BMW’s Four Cylinder Building in Munich15 years ago.

Then, that factory contained beer dispensing machines on the shop floor. Now, as the smart-suited and fluent English speaking guide explained, such things would be impossible under German law (as, of course, they would be under British law too.) Panels and other parts for the cars arrive at the factory on electric trams that may be seen any day journeying right through the centre of Dresden.

As it happened I had with me as reading matter The Diary of a Cotswold Parson, written by Oxfordshire-born Francis Witts.

He visited the city in 1798 and described in some detail what he saw.

Sadly many of the sights have gone, but he too remarked that it was remarkable how the city had been repaired after bombardments during the Seven Years War in the 1760s between European powers (including Britain, whose king was at that time also king of the German state of Hanover).

He remarked of one church he visited: “it was last bombarded with all the buildings around during the Seven Years War.” And he added: “It was begun to be rebuilt in 1764 and consecrated 1792. It is rather heavy but bombproof.”

How wrong he was. I could not find that particular church, but the Frauenkirche is awesome.

People of all nationalities silently file through the rebuilt place.

Most pause to examine the twisted and melted cross that one surmounted its dome — and has now been replaced by one made by a British goldsmith — the son of the pilot of a Lancaster bomber that flew over the city on that fateful night during the Second World War.

* Maritim room rates start from £100 in a single room. Day delegate rates at the conference centre start from £40. 24-hour delegate rates start from £75.