Nymphenburg Palace: there are no regular guided tours

Four things people get wrong before they arrive

Answered here so you are not working them out at the desk.

Does the park close in the winter?

No, and a supplier listing that says otherwise is simply wrong. The Bavarian Palace Administration publishes winter gate hours of 6 am to 6 pm for the park from January to March and in November and December. What closes on 16 October is the four park palaces — Amalienburg, Badenburg, Pagodenburg and Magdalenenklause — which reopen on 1 April. Hours through the year.

Is the combination ticket better value than the singles?

In summer the arithmetic usually works, because the four park palaces are open and the three single tickets add up. From 16 October they are shut, so the combination covers less for less money and the sum is a different one. We print both tariffs side by side rather than tell you which to buy. Both seasons, with the figures.

Can I book a guided tour of the palace from the palace?

Not a regular one. The operator’s own page says there are no regular guided tours. What it offers is an audio guide in several languages for three and a half euros, and it says group tours in English can be arranged. Live guiding at Nymphenburg is something you bring with you. Who sells one, and what each includes.

How long does Nymphenburg take?

Neither this palace nor the Residenz publishes a visit duration, so this site refuses to invent one. What decides it is how many of the three museums you want, whether the park palaces are open, and how long you spend in 200 hectares of park. How long to allow, and who ends up disappointed.

An honest guide to Schloss Nymphenburg

One sentence on the Bavarian Palace Administration’s own opening-hours page decides most of what follows: “There are no regular guided tours.” What the desk sells is rooms, and an audio handset for three and a half euros if you want one. Everything else on this page follows from that.

Why the cheapest listing has the worst reviews

The plain entry ticket is much the most-reviewed Nymphenburg product on GetYourGuide and the lowest-rated of the twelve this site tracks. That is not a verdict on the palace. Mario, who bought it, wrote “Très joli palais mais très peu à visiter” and gave it five stars anyway; Natascha wrote that she liked the whole building and was sorry more rooms were not open. People are rating what they were given to do inside it, and what they were given was a route and no explanation. The guided fast-track to the palace and the carriage museum, which supplies exactly that missing thing, sits at the top of the same catalogue. Whether it is worth going inside.

What the combination ticket covers

Three things, and a season. It covers the palace; the Marstallmuseum in the south wing of the former royal stables, together with the Museum of Nymphenburg Porcelain in the same building; and the four park palaces out in the grounds. From 16 October those four are shut, so the winter combination costs less and covers less, and whether it beats buying singles is a sum that changes with the date rather than a rule. The palace alone is under ten euros, the museums together are under ten, the four pavilions together are under six, and everyone under 18 goes in free, as do students over 18 from general, vocational and special schools on a valid ID. Figures move, so ours sit in the table on the tickets page rather than in this sentence. Last entry to all three museums is 30 minutes before closing, and it is enforced: Ivana, on the fast-track listing, reached the carriage museum at half past three with tickets already bought and was turned away at the door.

The park is the free half, and it does not close

Two hundred hectares behind the building, formal near the palace and landscaped further out by Friedrich Ludwig von Sckell in the early nineteenth century. It costs nothing, on any day of the year. The gates open at 6 am and shut at 6 pm from January to March and in November and December, at 8 pm in April and October, and at 9.30 pm from May to September. One supplier listing states that the park is closed in winter and reachable only in the summer months; the operator’s own published hours say otherwise, and the operator runs the gates. What genuinely closes on 16 October is the Amalienburg, the Badenburg, the Pagodenburg and the Magdalenenklause, which reopen on 1 April. The park and its four pavilions.

The rooms that earn the ticket

The Steinerner Saal runs through the centre block, frescoed by Johann Baptist Zimmermann and decorated by François de Cuvilliés, and it is the room people mean when they say the visit was worth it (the great hall). In the inner southern pavilion hang 36 portraits Ludwig I commissioned from Joseph Karl Stieler, of women drawn, in the source’s phrase, from all social classes of Munich (the Gallery of Beauties). Ludwig II was born in the Queen’s bedroom on 25 August 1845, which is the whole of this building’s claim on him and more than most buildings can manage (born here). Across the courtyard, the Marstallmuseum holds one of Europe’s great coach collections (the coaches and the porcelain). Neither this palace nor the Residenz publishes a visit duration or a room count, so this site prints neither: see how long to allow instead.

Nymphenburg or the Residenz?

The question this site’s readers ask more than any other, and there is a listing sold as the answer to it: a two-hour guided visit, in German, in costume, with tickets included, that lets you pick either palace on the day. The Residenz holds the state rooms, the Treasury and the Cuvilliés Theatre in the city centre; Nymphenburg holds the coaches, the Gallery of Beauties and a park you can walk for nothing. Both are run by the same administration, and both close on 1 January, Shrove Tuesday and 24, 25 and 31 December. Both tariffs and both seasons, side by side.

What the twelve listings actually reach

Six of the twelve go inside the palace. One of those, the architect-led walk for a maximum of twelve guests, says in its own inclusions that “Tickets are not included” and sends you to the operator’s shop, which makes it the only listing here honest about that before you pay. The hop-on-hop-off bus includes no admission of any kind and is transport to the gate. One city tour walks about half an hour of the park, which is free to walk anyway. And the biggest name on the page by a long way, with 16,428 ratings, spends the day at Ludwig II’s castles in the Alps and never comes near Nymphenburg at all. Every listing here is priced per person, including the private ones. All twelve, with what each one says.

If you have one afternoon

Come out from the centre, stand on the canal front for as long as the light holds, then buy the combination ticket and do the palace, the coaches and the porcelain in that order, watching the half-hour cut-off before closing. Then leave through the gate into the park and give the rest of the daylight to Sckell’s avenues and, from April to mid-October, to the Amalienburg. In winter the park outlasts the museums by hours, so walk it afterwards rather than first. Where the afternoon fits into two days.