Nymphenburg Palace

Nymphenburg is Munich's Versailles, a long baroque palace on the western side of the city, set behind a formal canal where swans glide and locals skate in hard winters. It began in 1664 as a summer villa built by Elector Ferdinand Maria and his wife Henriette Adelaide of Savoy to celebrate the birth of their heir, Max Emanuel, and grew over the following decades into a wide front of pavilions and galleries several hundred metres long. Inside, the palace is a sequence of state rooms rather than a long museum, which makes it an easier visit than the Residenz. The highlight is the Stone Hall, a three-storey festival hall with ceiling frescoes by Johann Baptist Zimmermann, and the most famous room is the Gallery of Beauties, where King Ludwig I hung thirty-six portraits of the women he most admired, from aristocrats to a shoemaker's daughter and the dancer Lola Montez, whose affair with the king helped cost him his throne. The palace is also where King Ludwig II, the builder of Neuschwanstein, was born in 1845, and his birth room is part of the tour. In the south wing, the Marstallmuseum displays the Wittelsbachs' coaches, sledges and harnesses, including Ludwig II's fantastical gilded state coaches and sleighs, and upstairs the Museum of Nymphenburg Porcelain shows the work of the manufactory still based at the palace. Behind the palace, the park stretches for more than a kilometre, with a French-style parterre, a grand cascade, and an English landscape garden around lakes and canals, hiding four small park palaces: the Amalienburg hunting lodge, a Rococo masterpiece with a hall of mirrors, the Badenburg with its heated bathing hall, the Pagodenburg and the Magdalenenklause hermitage. In winter, from 16 October to the end of March, the palace and museums open daily from 10am to 4pm, while the four park palaces stay closed until April.

Tickets and timing: in 2026 the palace costs ten euros, the Marstallmuseum with the porcelain museum eight, and the combined Nymphenburg ticket twenty in summer, when it includes the park palaces, and sixteen in winter, when they are closed. Under-18s enter free. Last admission to all buildings is half an hour before closing, and the palace closes on 1 January, Shrove Tuesday and 24, 25 and 31 December. The palace interior takes about an hour; add another hour for the coaches and porcelain, and as long as you like for the park, which opens early in the morning and closes at dusk, with longer evening hours in summer. A guided skip-the-line tour in English covers the palace and the Marstallmuseum in about two hours, and occasional classical concerts are held in the palace's grand rooms.

When to go: late spring to early autumn is the season for the full Nymphenburg experience, with the fountains playing from Easter to mid-October and the park palaces open, when you can easily spend a whole day here, ideally with a picnic or lunch at the palace cafe. Winter visits are shorter but still rewarding: the state rooms and coaches are indoors, crowds are lighter, and the frosty park, with the canal sometimes frozen hard enough for curling and skating, is beautiful. In summer, the park is also a favourite with locals for walks, runs and sunbathing on the lawns.

Getting there and combining: tram 17 from the main station or Karlsplatz runs straight to the palace in about twenty minutes, and bus routes also stop nearby. Next door, the Botanical Garden, with its glasshouses, makes a good pairing on a cool day. For a full royal circuit, pair Nymphenburg with the Residenz in the city centre, and if the story of Ludwig II captures you here, the natural next step is the day trip to Neuschwanstein, the castle he dreamed up and never saw completed.