5 Most Unique and beautiful Palaces in Germany

The first long trip I took alone was a train tour through the centre of Europe. My main goal was to visit as many palaces and castles as I could in Germany. For that purpose I borrowed a guide about castles from a friend and planned a circular itinerary starting in Prague and ending in Munich. Here you have the ultimate ranking of the most unique and beautiful palaces in Germany that I encountered through my trip.

On fifth position, one of the most beautiful palaces in Germany: Augustusburg

This palace, World Heritage by the UNESCO, is located in the West half of the country, barely few metres away from the train station of Brühl. During the time that Bonn was the capital of Germany, this palace housed the government. I don’t know if it is because it hasn’t been occupied for “relatively” few years, but the whole building is completely empty. The rooms are beautiful on their own right, the ceilings are breathtaking and even the floors are great. But there’s no furniture, at all.

One of the most curious things I remember about this palace was the wall decorations. It turns out that they wanted to get fancy marble columns and decorations, but it was too expensive… so, they decided to mix different plaster colours and then they polished them until they looked like marble (but quite less expensive!). The marble of the poor. Truth be told, if you do not know about it, it could pass as real marble.

Want to discover a magnificent off the beaten path Castle in Germany? Well, head to Cochem an der Mosel to find one of the cutest little castles in Europe!

The gardens of the Palace of Augustusburg were also very pretty. Perfectly shaped hedges surrounding extremely colourful flowers and small waterfalls and fountains. Truly beautiful!

It is possible to get a combined ticket and visit also the Falkenlust. This palace is a small adjacent building decorated with birds in general and plenty of falcons (ergo the name). People used to meet there after a day of hunting. Even if it is not one of the most beautiful palaces in Germany, it is worth the visit.

Fourth position: Herrenchiemsee

Opposite to the previous, these are located on the west of the country, not too far away from Munich, in Herrenchiemsee. This beauty is located in a island within a lake (Chiemsee lake), and belonged to the infamous crazy king (Louis II of Bayern). This king had an important fixation with the monarch Louis XIV of France.

In case you failed history in your high school years, Louis XIV was the builder of the palace of Versailles.

The crazy king, or Louis II of Bayern, decided to construct the palace of Herrenchiemsee like an ode to his French counterpart. This palace is an almost perfect copy of the palace of Versailles. The copy was so detailed that the paintings of Louis XIV’s were the same. Even those of the family of the French monarch.

I must say I arrived to this palace thanks to the guide I mentioned before. What I did not tell you is that the copy of the guide that I had was in German, so I didn’t have any idea about it being a copy of another one of my favourite palaces. When I arrived to the island and saw the fountains with the typical turtles and frogs I thought… Why is this so familiar? The ones from Versailles are golden and this were stone-like and way less shiny. In any case, they are exactly the sames, but it took me a while to realize it.

When I entered the palace, the guide gave us some explanations. Then it all made sense and I recognized the architecture. One of the curiosities of this palace is that the king who order its construction lived there no longer than a week. After that, he moved to another one of his many beautiful palaces in Germany and died before having the opportunity of coming back.

Near this Palace, discover a unique flower park; Mainau! From sculptures made out of flowers to gnomes and swans in love.

Despite this, the construction of the palace kept on going and today is finished and perfectly conserved. Since it was never used as the king palace, it is still like it was on the last day of its construction. And that’s specially obvious in the Hall of Mirrors. It’s amazing how different it is from Versailles! (the version in Germany being perfectly conserved!).

Also, this room is slightly longer that the one in Paris and in one of the ends, there’s a typical component of the Bayern ceiling decorations, where one of the paintings seem to be leaving the 2D and becoming a sculpture.

In any case, all this is from the new palace. This small island has actually two palaces. In the old one there’s this small community of nuns. They take care of the new palace and sell some things for the tourists.

Starting the podium, in third position… Nymphenburg

These palaces are located in the city of Munich. It is possible to reach them by tram from the centre in around 30min, which is very comfortable! They are also some of the most beautiful palaces in Germany, or for what is worth, in Europe.

Their name means “The Palace of the Nymphs”. And there is a reason for that name. There are plenty of them all around the palace in ceilings and walls. The whole construction was made following baroque standards and was the residency of the Bayern Kings for centuries. Today, most of the rooms are kept like they were originally, but since the palace has been used for years, some of the newer residents adapted some rooms into rococo or neoclassic styles. In any case, all of them are amazing.

I must add that this palace was one of the few in which taking pictures was allowed. That was a plus!

I could get tired while explaining things about the palace, but I think that pictures could give a better explanation that I will ever be able to.

Almost in the pole position, not some palaces but a town: Potsdam

Potsdam is a small town in the periphery of Berlin. I thought they were barely four houses, but to be honest, the town is huge. And… it’s the town with the highest concentration of palaces per metre square. Not in Germany but in the world. Isn’t it the best?

Many of the most beautiful palaces in Germany are located in Potsdam. They are distributed all around the city, but the one I liked the most was the complex of the Palace of Sanssouci. And this name means… No Worries! C’mon, can it get any better?

The park where all these palaces are located covers several kilometres of lakes, grass, gardens, waterfalls and, of course, palaces. The whole zone is also considered a World Heritage site by the UNESCO. There are way too many palaces to name them all, but the most important are the Palace of Sanssouci, the Orangerie and the New Palace.

Depending on the day of the week that you decide to visit the palace, it can happen that one or more of the palaces are closed. The day that I visited Potsdam, the New Palace (the one that is supposed to be the best) was closed. In any case, I visited all the other palaces I had an entry ticket to, I had picnic in a great garden, and I even relaxed with a book for a while underneath a tree shadow. It was an exceptional day.

Even though all the palaces follow a similar style, some are more baroque than classic, others are more modern, another one is a mix of several styles…. In general, you should visit them all and you will enjoy a trip through different styles and cultures. It’s well worth it.

Besides these beautiful palaces, there are plenty of unique areas in the park and around the lakes where walking around already makes for an exceptional experience. There are some other smaller pavilions either focused on hunting or tea (the one for japanese tea is amazing), end even a section with Roman ruins!

I loved most of the beautiful palaces in Germany that I visited, but let’s just say I fell in love with Potsdam.

La crême de la crême of beautiful palaces in Germany…. Ludwigsburg

Even though it’s barely known, this palace is the most espectacular one I’ve seen not in Germany, but anywhere. Located in the small town of Ludwigsburg, this residential palace is one of the biggest of the country and it’s barely a few kilometres away from Stuttgart. It’s excepcionally conserved and a beautiful mixture of baroque, rococo and imperium styles. And it was unaffected by the war, so everything is original!

Again, I feel like I should show you the things I will never be able to explain with words. Unfortunately, pictures were not allowed, so these are some photographies I have found online!

The complex of the Residency is composed by three different palaces: the main one or Ludwigsburg palace, the palace Favorite and the palace Monrepos. To date, the Residency houses three museums, one about baroque art, another about baroque fashion and the last one about porcelain.

The main palace has its own opera theatre (instead of marble, like everything is there, it’s made of wood for better resonance), and there’s even a church. Even though the pictures may not represent the real beauty of the palace, this is one of the most beautiful palaces in Germany.

There was one small thing I didn’t like about this palace: it can only be visited with a guide, and there’s only one tour a day in English (here you see how popular it is outside the borders of Germany…ehem…). Since I didn’t want to wait three hours until the tour in English, I took the German one. I didn’t get much out of the guide, but there were a couple of very nice Australians that helped me by doing a simultenous translation to me (thanks!).

In any case, these palaces are simply amazing. You should definetely put them on you palace-bucket-list!

An extra: Neuschwanstein

Oh the famous inspiration for Disney’s Castle… This castle/palace is something you should see when doing this type of tourism (looking for the most beautiful palaces in Germany and so). It’s location is unbeatable. Very few places can compare to the Black Forest.

When I think about this place, the first image that comes to my mind is the typical picture taken from the tiny bridge, one of the most iconic landscapes in Bayern. The problem is that by looking at that picture you don’t realize everything that’s behind: queueing for a while with 80 more people to take barely two pictures before you are pushed out of there by someone else trying to get the same picture everybody has.

Or the three hours of queueing to get the tickets to get into the Palace (even if you have bought it online before).

Or that they pile you like sheep and make you visit the palace in barely 10 min so that they can squeeze the next group of people behind you. Even though all of this is bad enough, in my opinion the worst part, that no one tells you ahead, is that most of the interiors of the palace are yet to be built.

in my opinion, this castle/palace is way overvarrated and extremely expensive considering that there are only three rooms to actually visit inside. Yes, I won’t deny it, I always wanted to visit this castle, mostly because my parents had a 4000 pieces puzzle of it while I was growing up and it looked amazing. Even though I loved the exteriors and one of the rooms, overally, I was very disappointed. If you want to go in, go ahead, but the Castle of Hohenschwangau, next to this one, is much nicer than Neuschwanstein.

Last notes

What do you think? Should I visit and add any other one? have you been to these? I’d love to hear about it!