Ludwig II's palaces: Neuschwanstein, Linderhof, Herrenchiemsee and Schachen

Four palaces, one king

King Ludwig II of Bavaria commissioned four buildings that the Bavarian Palace Administration now cares for: Neuschwanstein, Linderhof, Herrenchiemsee New Palace and the King's House on Schachen.[1] They were inscribed together on the World Heritage List at the World Heritage Committee's session in Paris in July 2025, as the 55th World Heritage site in Germany, according to the German Commission for UNESCO.[21] The commission's page describes them as retreats he built for himself, planned as places of seclusion.[20]

They are often treated as a set of castles, but they are four very different things: a medieval-style castle, a small Rococo-revival palace in a valley, a version of Versailles on an island and a wooden mountain lodge. On the Bavarian Palace Administration's own account, only one of them was finished in his lifetime, and that one not entirely.[7] Hohenschwangau Castle, which the administration's German page describes as close to Neuschwanstein, is not among them: it was his father's.[4][6]

Neuschwanstein: the "new castle" above the Pöllat gorge

Neuschwanstein stands in the municipality of Schwangau; its address is Neuschwansteinstraße 20, 87645 Schwangau. The Bavarian Palace Administration's German page calls it a monument to the culture and kingship of the Middle Ages that Ludwig revered, built in medieval forms with what was then modern technology, and names the Wartburg, which he visited in 1867, as a direct model. Wagner's operas, Lohengrin and Tannhäuser above all, shaped its imagery, the same page says.[4]

It was never finished. According to the administration, the gatehouse was complete in 1873 and Ludwig lived in it; his rooms in the main building became habitable only in 1884; the south wing was completed in simplified form in 1891, after his death; and the planned keep with a chapel was never built. Ludwig called it his "new castle"; the name Neuschwanstein came only after he died.[4]

Ludwig knew Hohenschwangau from childhood. His father, the later King Maximilian II, bought it as a ruin in 1832 and rebuilt it, and its owner's page says the royal family spent many weeks a year there and that Ludwig spent a few weeks there each summer.[6] The administration's German page says it was at Hohenschwangau that the young Ludwig immersed himself in the veneration of the Middle Ages.[4] It belongs today to a different owner, the Wittelsbacher Ausgleichsfonds, which is why it is ticketed differently from Neuschwanstein; see Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau tickets.

Linderhof: the one he saw finished, almost

Linderhof grew piece by piece. The palace's own history page says Ludwig made his first plans there in 1868, that neither a Versailles-type palace nor a large Byzantine palace planned for the valley was ever built, and that the present palace developed around his father's forester's house.[7] The administration's directions page places it in the Graswang valley, near the village of Ettal.[8]

Its park holds the buildings that make Linderhof distinct. The Venus Grotto, an artificial dripstone cave built in 1875 to 1877 for the king's sole use, reproduces the stage set of Act I of Wagner's Tannhäuser and was fitted with coloured electric lighting between 1878 and 1881.[9] The Moorish Kiosk and the Moroccan House, the German Commission for UNESCO notes, were originally built for Paris world exhibitions.[20]

Was Linderhof finished? The two administration pages that answer this do not say quite the same thing. The Neuschwanstein site calls Linderhof "finished in 1878 and the only one Ludwig II completed and actually lived in".[1] Linderhof's own history page is more careful: it calls it "the only large palace King Ludwig II lived to see completed", and then describes a last rebuilding in 1885 and 1886, when the bedroom was enlarged, and says he did not live to see the new bedroom completed.[7] XTOUR's reading is that the palace was in use and essentially complete from the late 1870s, with one room still being rebuilt when he died.

Herrenchiemsee: Versailles on an island

Ludwig bought the Herreninsel in the Chiemsee in 1873 as the site for a palace modelled on Versailles, built as a "Temple of Fame" for Louis XIV, whom he admired. Building began in 1878 from plans by Georg Dollmann, after thirteen planning stages; when Ludwig died in 1886 it was incomplete, and parts were later demolished.[13] The Neuschwanstein site adds that its costs by then already exceeded those of Neuschwanstein and Linderhof together.[1]

The German Commission for UNESCO records that Ludwig had visited Versailles in 1874, and quotes a conservator of the Bavarian Palace Administration that no single room at Herrenchiemsee is an exact copy of its model.[20] On the same island, Ludwig had rooms in the former Augustinian monastery, later known as the Old Palace, converted for his private use, and in 1948 the Constitutional Convention that prepared the Federal Republic's constitution met there.[1] The King Ludwig II Museum in the New Palace's south wing, opened in 1987, includes furniture from his destroyed apartment in the Munich Residenz and the first bedroom of Linderhof.[16]

The King's House on Schachen

The fourth palace is the smallest and the hardest to reach. The administration's German page says Ludwig planned a mountain house from 1869 and chose the Schachen, at 1,866 metres below the Wetterstein massif; unlike his father, he did not want it for hunting. Outside it is a wooden chalet; upstairs is the Turkish Hall, modelled on a hall in the palace of Eyüp fitted out for Sultan Selim III, where Ludwig celebrated his birthday and name day on 25 August.[17] The Neuschwanstein site says the house can be reached only on foot, from Elmau or Garmisch-Partenkirchen.[1] XTOUR does not publish routes, walking times or trail conditions for it.

How each is visited, according to the administration

The palace interiors of all four are seen on guided tours, but the ticketing differs, and the operator's pages set it out palace by palace.

• Neuschwanstein: tickets online through hohenschwangau.de or, for the same day only, at the Ticket Center in Hohenschwangau.[3] The details are in the ticket guide.
• Linderhof: the palace and the Venus Grotto are seen on guided tours.[12] The admission page says only some tickets are sold online, and that when none are left online a visitor can usually still buy at the cash desk.[11] The Venus Grotto and the Moroccan House close from mid-October to mid-April, and on 9 October 2026 the Moorish Kiosk was under scaffolding, with its interior hoped to reopen at the start of the 2028 season.[12] The site's general page warns of steep paths, up to a 20 per cent gradient, between the park buildings.[10]
• Herrenchiemsee: the state rooms are seen only on a guided tour; tickets are sold online or on site, with a contingent kept for visitors on the day.[14] The island is reached by boat, and the admission page notes that the boat trip is not included in its prices.[15]
• Schachen: guided tours only, and only from early June to early October depending on snow; tickets are sold solely at the cash desk in the King's House, without reservations or card payment, the German page says.[17]

The administration's annual and 14-day tickets list all four, though they are not sold at the King's House on Schachen itself.[18]

Where the official accounts disagree

Three points of history are told differently by official sources, and XTOUR repeats each version rather than choosing one.

When Neuschwanstein was begun. The Wittelsbacher Ausgleichsfonds' Neuschwanstein page says it was begun in 1868.[5] The Bavarian Palace Administration's German Neuschwanstein page says construction ran from September 1869.[4] Its Linderhof history page, meanwhile, says Ludwig laid Neuschwanstein's foundation stone in 1867/68.[7]

How soon the palaces opened to the public. The administration's English Neuschwanstein page says the castle opened seven weeks after Ludwig's death,[2] and its German page gives the date as 1 August 1886, after his death on 13 June.[4] The German Commission for UNESCO says the palaces were first opened "only six weeks later".[20]

Whether Linderhof was finished, as set out above.[7][1]

On Ludwig's death itself, the commission's page says the government had him declared mentally ill and unfit to rule on 8 June 1886, that he was placed under legal incapacity (Entmündigung) the following day, and that four days after that he drowned in the Starnberger See under circumstances that remain unexplained.[20] XTOUR does not go beyond that.

Ludwig II and Munich

Two of the places tied to Ludwig are in Munich rather than in the mountains. He was born at Nymphenburg Palace on 25 August 1845,[19] and his first building work as king, the Linderhof history page says, was the redesign of his rooms in the Munich Residenz.[7] Those rooms were destroyed; furniture from them is shown in the King Ludwig II Museum on Herrenchiemsee.[16] The two Munich palaces are compared in Munich Residenz or Nymphenburg Palace.

What XTOUR does not know

XTOUR does not publish distances, routes, travel times or same-day combinations between the four palaces, and it does not suggest that any two belong in one outing: they are in four different places, from Schwangau to the Chiemsee. It does not publish prices, hours or accessibility information, and it does not sell tickets. Füssen is the base XTOUR lists for Neuschwanstein; Linderhof, Herrenchiemsee and Schachen are not within any XTOUR destination. For how the Bavarian Palace Administration's passes relate to other operators', see who runs Germany's palaces and castles.