Ettal and Schloss Linderhof
Slotted into a narrow gap in the mountains between Oberammergau and Oberau and, if possible, even more improbably pretty than Oberammergau, the tiny village of ETTAL is utterly dominated by its magnificent Benedictine abbey, Kloster Ettal.
Kloster Ettal
Kloster Ettal was rebuilt in its present, showily Baroque form between 1744 and 1753 by Joseph Schmuzer, who was required to replace the still-incomplete work of his fellow architect Enrico Zuccalli after the church was devastated by fire in 1744. Despite the overwhelmingly Baroque appearance of his work, bits of the old church were incorporated into the present structure – you pass through a fourteenth-century Gothic portal on your way into the church. The domed interior is quite breathtaking, with frescoes by the Tyroleans Johann Jakob Zeiller and Martin Knoller. After you’ve admired the church, you can stock up on carvings, candles, liqueurs and Ettaler beer in the abbey shop.
Schloss Linderhof
Tucked into a narrow valley some 11.5km west of Ettal, Ludwig II’s Schloss Linderhof was originally a hunting lodge belonging to Ludwig’s father Maximilian II. The palace was enlarged and re-clad between 1870 and 1878 by Georg Dollmann, who was later to design Schloss Herrenchiemsee. Unlike that palace, Linderhof was actually completed during Ludwig’s lifetime. It looks relatively modest from the outside, but the elaborate neo-Rococo interiors are anything but: the riot of gold leaf reaches a crescendo in the king’s staggeringly ornate bedroom, which is the largest room in the house.
The park surrounding the Schloss is delightful, and is particularly known for its fountains, which perform every half-hour from April to mid-October. There are several highly theatrical follies in the grounds, including the Maurische Kiosk (Moorish kiosk) and the spectacular Venus-Grotte, an artificial cave with a lake, fake stalactites and stalagmites, and a golden barge with cupid as a figurehead – all inspired by Wagner’s opera, Tannhäuser.
Füssen
The first – or last – stop on the Romantic Road is FÜSSEN, in a beautiful setting on the River Lech at the southwest end of the broad Forggensee hard by the Austrian border. The town is dominated by its Late-Gothic Schloss Neuschwanstein and by the impressive buildings of the former Benedictine abbey of St Mang, and is much the liveliest place in the district, with a compact Altstadt that fizzes with activity at any time of year.
No mere tourist spot, Füssen is also a garrison town, home to a couple of battalions of the German army’s mountain troops. With a direct rail connection from Munich, moreover, it’s the most practical base from which to explore the sights of the eastern Allgäu, including the royal castles at Hohenschwangau. It likewise makes an ideal base for hikers and cyclists, with an extensive network of walking and bike trails fanning out into the surrounding district, including some that cross the border into Austria.
The vision of the pinnacled and turreted castle of Neuschwanstein, perched high on its crag and rising above the mist, is perhaps the most reproduced of all tourist images of Germany, a Disney-like fantasy amid a setting of breathtaking alpine beauty. Neuschwanstein is not the only royal castle at Hohenschwangau: if it weren’t literally and figuratively overshadowed by Neuschwanstein, Hohenschwangau, in the valley below Ludwig’s castle at the southern end of the village, might be more widely famous.
Schloss Hohenschwangau
Standing on a low wooded hill above Alpsee, Schloss Hohenschwangau was a ruin when Ludwig’s father, Maximilian II, bought it in 1832 while still crown prince, and had it rebuilt in a prettily romantic neo-Gothic style. Ludwig II spent much of his childhood here, and it was here that he first encountered the legend of Lohengrin, the Swan Knight; the Schloss is decorated with frescoes on the theme by Michael Neher and Lorenz Quaglio. Schloss Hohenschwangau still belongs to a Wittelsbach trust, not to the state of Bavaria, and part of its charm is that it feels altogether more homely than its showy neighbour.
“Mad” King Ludwig II
For someone who was so shy and reclusive in life, King Ludwig II has achieved remarkable and lasting popularity in death. Born at Schloss Nymphenburg in 1845, he had spirited good looks not unlike those of his cousin, the Austrian Empress Elisabeth, and cut quite a dash when he came to the Bavarian throne in 1864 at the age of 18. Ludwig was fascinated with the French royal dynasty, the Bourbons, to which his own family was related. This developed into a fixation with the most illustrious of the Bourbons, Louis XIV, whose absolute power contrasted so starkly with the relative powerlessness of the Bavarian monarchy after its defeat alongside Austria in the 1866 war against Prussia. Seemingly overcompensating for this political impotence, the king retreated increasingly into an extravagant fantasy world, becoming steadily more eccentric and – towards the end of his life – rather corpulent.
He was a patron of Richard Wagner, whose fantastical operas fired the king’s own vivid imagination, and though he disapproved of Wagner’s anti-Semitism he continued to support the composer financially, even planning a lavish festival theatre to host the composer’s operas in Munich, which was to remain unbuilt. A political reactionary but at the same time a romantic, Ludwig devoted his attention to fabulous but ruinously expensive projects to realize his fantasies in built form: a castle straight from the age of chivalry at Neuschwanstein, a homage to the Sun King at Herrenchiemsee and an eclectic but breathtakingly opulent “villa” at Linderhof. Eventually his spending caught up with him, as foreign banks threatened to foreclose. Ludwig’s refusal to react to this crisis in rational fashion prompted the Bavarian government to act unconstitutionally, declaring him insane and removing him from the throne. He was interned at the castle of Berg on Starnberger See, where he and his doctor were discovered drowned in mysterious circumstances on June 13, 1886. Very shortly afterwards his palaces – which had been intensely private places during his life – were opened to the paying public.
Schloss Neuschwanstein
If Schloss Neuschwanstein seems too good to be true, that’s no surprise. The most theatrical of all “Mad” King Ludwig II’s castles has its origins in his desire to rebuild an existing ruin in the style of the German Middle Ages. Ludwig was inspired by the recently restored Wartburg in Thuringia; his architects, Eduard Riedel and Georg Dollmann – who would go on to design Linderhof and Herrenchiemsee – worked from drawings by theatre designer Christian Jank. Work began in 1869, the castle was “topped out” in 1880 and the king was able to move into the (still unfinished) Pallas, or castle keep, in 1884. Ludwig chopped and changed the plans as he went along, incorporating a huge throne room that required modern steel-framed construction methods to make it viable.
The exterior of Neuschwanstein, in a sort of exaggerated Romanesque, is theatrical enough, but the real flights of fancy begin inside, where the decorative schemes are inspired by Wagner’s operas Tannhäuser and Lohengrin. The Byzantine-style Thronsaal (Throne Room), inspired by the church of Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, was intended to represent the Grail Hall from Parsifal and was completed in the year of Ludwig’s death, 1886. Ludwig’s bedroom is in a heightened Gothic style, with the king’s four-poster bed more closely resembling some fifteenth-century church altar than a place in which to sleep. The highlight – and peak of the king’s Wagnerian obsession – however, is the Sängersaal, or Singers’ Hall, which occupies the entire fourth floor and was inspired by the famous hall at the Wartburg that was the scene of the Singers’ Contest from Tannhäuser.
If you’ve not seen it on your way from the bus, it’s worth strolling uphill to the Marienbrücke after the tour finishes for the dramatic views down into the Pöllat gorge and across to the castle.
Garmisch-Partenkirchen
As the hyphen in its name suggests, the chic skiing resort of GARMISCH-PARTENKIRCHEN was originally not one alpine village but two, which faced each other across the Partnach stream and were united in a shotgun wedding in time for the 1936 Winter Olympics. The Games were an enormous success – so much so that the town was slated to host the 1940 Winter Games after the Japanese city of Sapporo withdrew. In the event, of course, war intervened and the 1940 Games didn’t take place, but Garmisch-Partenkirchen has been on the international winter-sports map ever since, which gives the resort a relatively cosmopolitan air. Though any clear distinction between Garmisch and Partenkirchen has long since vanished, the two halves of the town do have sharply contrasting characters: Garmisch is lively and international, while Partenkirchen better preserves its original alpine charm. Looming over them both is the Zugspitze, at 2962m Germany’s highest mountain. In summer, the town’s mountainous setting attracts hikers and climbers.
The Zugspitze massif
To get to the top of the Zugspitze, Germany’s highest peak, take the Zugspitzbahn cogwheel railway from the Bahnhof Zugspitzbahn alongside Garmisch-Partenkirchen’s Hauptbahnhof at least as far as Eibsee, where you can either stay on the cog railway, or else transfer to the dramatic (and much faster) Eibseeseilbahn cable car, which ascends nearly 2000m to the summit in ten minutes. If you stick with the train, you’re deposited on the Schneefern glacier on the Zugspitzplatt plateau below the peak, from where you complete the journey to the summit on the ultramodern Gletscherbahn cable car. At the summit, there’s a second cable-car station – the top of the Tiroler Zugspitzbahn, which ascends from the Austrian side. There’s a redundant frontier post between the two stations. Descent back to the valley is via the Eibseeseilbahn cable car with a transfer to the cogwheel railway for the remainder of the return journey down to Garmisch Partenkirchen.
From November to April the Zugspitzplatt offers Germany’s highest skiing, with powder snow, a range of red and blue runs and spectacular views, extending in clear weather as far as Italy and Switzerland. For a brief period in midwinter you can also stay in an igloo hotel (iglu-dorf.com; €99 per person per night). In summer, there is a limited selection of short hikes, including one which crosses the glacier to the Windloch observation point, from which you have good views of Ehrwald in Tyrol, 2000m below. The descent on foot to Garmisch-Partenkirchen is only for the fit, and takes seven to ten hours, though many choose to break the journey overnight at the Reintalangerhütte (refuge operated by the German Alpine Association;00821 7089743; dorm or double €13 per person; half-board €20 per person).