It's a place of contradictions. It's opulent in decor yet modest in size, palatial in design but solitary in intent. Most oddly, it's sitting in the most quintessentially Bavarian landscape you can imagine yet completely foreign in its architecture. A French palace sits in Italian gardens accompanied by Middle Eastern garden follies. Wonderful, if deeply bizarre. This is the only castle Ludwig ever finished, and the one he actually lived in for many years. If you're going to claim any understanding of the man, you'll get it here. And I suspect all those odd contradictions get right to the heart of his character.
Linderhof is an escapist fantasy. Pushed out of any active role in government, socially alienated and a dreamer from birth, Ludwig took refuge in a dream of the past. Specifically, the height of absolute monarchy under France's Louis XIV. Linderhof re-creates its rococo splendour with curvaceous, gilded plaster, inlaid marble, lush tapestries and huge mirrors. The attention to detail is staggering, though you'll barely have time to notice on your half-hour tour. From the solid ivory chandelier, festooned with intricate carving, to the enormous Meissen porcelain floral centrepiece, so real you have to do a double-take to confirm they're not fresh flowers, every item here is a masterpiece.
Aside from the opulence, the main thing you notice is that it's not very big. There are just six main rooms, and only the bedroom of a size you'd actually call "palatial". Linked by small ante-chambers, they flow in a continuous circle around a grand entry stair. It's easy to imagine Ludwig alone here, wandering from room to room and contemplating what might have been. In the dining room, you'll see the famous dumb-waiter table, which could be raised and lowered into the kitchen below. This allowed Ludwig to announce "tischlein deck dich" (table, lay yourself) and have a kingly banquet materialise without the need to see another human being. He dined alone, while reportedly chatting to busts of Louis XV, Madame du Pompadour and Marie Antoinette.
Admittedly, this does give credence to the "madness" claim. And it's not hard to imagine how this place could drive you more than a little loopy. The bedroom copies the vast stage set of the "morning levee" from Versailles. Sleeping alone in this echoing space could only compound loneliness. As Ludwig aged, he became increasingly nocturnal. He would have wandered these halls with heavy curtains drawn, cocooned in candlelight and brocade. In the hall of mirrors ... essentially a throne room ... reflective walls set opposite each other repeat your image to infinity. Alone, at 3 am, I think that room's beauty could slide into nightmare. I was ready to get outside.
The grounds at Linderhof are as good as the main building, and your visit would be incomplete without a thorough wander. Leave yourself two hours to do it properly. Most impressive is the artificial grotto tucked into the hill above the house. It re-creates the underground lair of Venus from the first Act of Tannhauser, brought to life with creepy rock formations, lake with swan boat and dramatic mood lighting. Everyone talks about Neuschwanstein inspiring Disney on the castle front; I'd bet my mouse ears this place inspired the first bit of the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. Ludwig used to climb up here from the house for a bit of variety. With generous advanced warning, there was even central heating to warm up the air and turn that lake into a comfortable, heated indoor swimming pool. Sadly, the envisioned performance of even a bit of Wagner never took place, undoubtably because the hermit king would have needed to allow others into his subterranean kingdom.
For a complete change of pace, there's a Moorish Kiosk and a Moroccan House, both of which look as if a genie from Arabian Nights had picked up a pasha's love nest and dropped it on the Alpine hillside. They're ornate, picture-perfect in detail and utterly ridiculous. But great fun. At a further distance from the main house there Hundig's Hut (a German feasting hall and another Wagnerian stage set), Gurnemanz' Hermitage (more Wagner) and a music pavilion. Moving between these outrageous garden follies, you'll be hiking through Alpine meadows and along woodland paths past which waterfalls rush from the peaks above. Remove every scrap of architecture and the valley would be worth seeing on its own for its natural splendour. Which Ludwig helped along close to the house, of course, with formal flower beds, terraces and water cascades.
The glories of Linderhof, however, are just a warm-up for Ludwig's Francophile main event: Herrenchiemsee. This is the one all the foreign tourists miss. You've probably never heard of it, but I guarantee you've seen it. If you're making a historical film set in Versailles, you'll shoot here. It's a close copy in some places, more "in the spirit of" in others, but it's all grand, huge and Louis XIV would be instantly at home.
Location is certainly one of the reasons for its relative lack of renown. Unlike the close cluster of Linderhof, Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau, Herrenchiemsee sits alone. It's about half way between Munich and Salzburg, on an island in Bavaria's largest lake, the Chiemsee. You'll either need to get a train or drive to Prien, then you'll have the boat ride, and then a 20-30 minute walk to the palace. If you want to see it, you're making a day trip for it alone. No wonder this was the only Ludwig II site at which our fellow tourists were mostly German. Foreigners should make more of an effort; it's worth it.
The impressive baroque exterior and lavish fountain-scape does, indeed, take you to Versailles. On a smaller scale, and with a fraction of the tourists. The interior is equally impressive, but there's enough space to appreciate it. My last visit to Versailles was one of the worst sightseeing experiences of my life. (Story here.) It was like being packed into a London rush hour train for two hours with a cacophony of clashing accents under an ornamental ceiling. Here, you can appreciate the Boulle cabinetry, the wall paintings, the grand portraits, the intricate clocks, the ethereal ceiling paintings and the crystal chandeliers. The hall of mirrors at Herrenchiemsee is actually much better than the original it mimics because you can see it: they rope off two thirds of it and you get to look down an empty stretch to get the full effect. And the mirrors are in much better reflective shape.
And yet, like the rest of Ludwig's buildings, Herrenchiemsee is a stage set. The marbles of the great staircase are actually paint effects, and all the luxury is a thin veneer over a modern brick frame. Most of the palace was unfinished at his death and stayed that way. It's a fascinating comparison to walk through the unfinished areas. The photo I most wanted to take was a quick glimpse of some of that bare shell seen through an open door in the opulent marble hall. (Sadly, photos aren't allowed within the palace, so no chance of that. I've pulled the interior illustrations here from the internet.)
Just like Linderhof, Ludwig meant to wander this vastness alone. Unlike Versailles, he never intended the rooms to see crowds of courtiers. The few nights he stayed here before his death were spent in isolation. There's another levitating table here to allow invisible service, and another vast bedroom that would never see company. Every dancing putti is secretly weeping for the loneliness of his creator.
Once you're finished with the palace, there's an excellent museum here of all things Ludwig. It dives into his life and his passions, illustrated with objets d'art, models, photographs and furniture moved here from other properties. Unlike the palace interiors, where you're rushed along at pace, you can linger here as long as you wish to really take in the detail. There's a magnificent room focusing on his relationship with Wagner, filled with models of opera houses (both built and imagined) and detailed production models of the original stage sets. Another highlight is a film composed of computer animations of the Ludwigian architectural projects still on the drawing board at his death. The Chinese palace would have been the wackiest, most amazing one yet. And you also get a glimpse of what the world lost: Ludwig built a lavish greenhouse running along the roof of the Residenz in Munich that they chose not to resurrect after the war.Tragedy and opulence, drama and loneliness, exquisite beauty and overkill verging on tackiness ... Ludwig's architectural legacy has it all. They say that the last words of the Emperor Nero as he bled out after he stabbed himself were "what an artist dies with me." It would have been completely appropriate for Ludwig to say the same thing as he sunk beneath the waters of Lake Starnberg. But we'll never know. Whether it was suicide or murder, there were no witnesses. Only the buildings are left to stand as his legacy. And a fine one they are.
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