As a part of our Starnberger Lake trip, we visited the famous Linderhof Palace which is about 1 hour drive from the lake. While driving we discovered a wonderful village called Ettal. The German Alpine road is passing by this village which is about 869m above the sea and known as high mountain pass.
The first thing you notice in this village is the Ettal Abbey, which is a Benedictine monastery dating back to 1330. The place is quite touristic as the monastry runs a brewery, a distillery, a bookstore, an art publishing house, a hotel and a cheese factory joint venture.
Linderhof Park & Palace
After our stop in Ettal Abbey, we moved forward and drove to Linderhof Palace. We just had to pay €2 for parking and we were able to catch the last tour of the palace itself. You can also enjoy the park & palace view & garden and the fountain without paying. You only pay when you want to visit interiors. The tour took about half an hour. Sadly, it is not allowed to take photos inside. This place used to be where Ludwig II makes hunting expeditions with his father.
So mad? or melanholic Ludwig II has started building three palaces in his life (Linderhof, Neuschwanstein and Chiemsee) and he could only live enough to see the Linderhof completed. His dead body was found in Starnberger lake and it was never understood if it was a suicide or drowning.
Linderhof park is pretty big and there are several more things to see such as Music Pavillion, Moroccan House, Terrace Gardens, Moorish Kiosk, Hunding’s Hut, Hermitage of Gurnemanz, Venus Grotto (in restoration until 2024), Forbidden Gate. The nature is stunning all round the park! The green, the river (I filled up my bottle with it and drank it, I am still alive), we heard some cows with bells on, the mountains. Very picturesque!
Among the other things in the park we thought Hunding’s Hut was very interesting altough we could not enter the building. It is basically a hut which has a living tree inside. The hut was modelled on Hunding’s dwelling in the first act of the “Walküre” from the “Ring des Nibelungen” by Richard Wagner.
Ludwig II used to come here to read and he wanted his servants to be in the costume related to what he is reading, mostly a germanic style.
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