About me, and about this site
I am Korbinian Reithmayr and I guide people around Munich for a living. I walk the Nymphenburg canal most mornings, before the tour groups and usually before the swans have decided anything, and I have taken more visitors through the Steinerner Saal than I could count. This site is the answer to the two questions I get asked at the gate more than any other: what does the ticket actually cover, and should I be at the Residenz instead.
Why this site exists
Because of one sentence the Bavarian Palace Administration prints beside its own opening hours: “There are no regular guided tours.”At the state palace an hour up the road at Würzburg the ticket includes a guided tour; here it includes the rooms and, if you want one, an audio handset charged separately for a few euros.
Everything about how this palace is sold online follows from that sentence. It is why the guided fast-track tour through the state rooms sits at 4.9, while the plain entry ticket — by far the most-reviewed Nymphenburg listing on GetYourGuide — collects five-star reviews like “très joli palais mais très peu à visiter”: lovely rooms, wanting a voice to explain them. So I wrote the plain version: what the combination ticket covers in each season, what you actually walk through, and whether it is worth going inside at all.
What this site covers, and what the palace sells
The state ticket comes from the palace itself. The combination ticket — the palace, the Marstallmuseum with the porcelain collection, and the four park palaces out in the grounds — belongs to the Bavarian Palace Administration and is sold at its own desk and on its own website. It is about twenty euros for an adult in summer and less in winter, everyone under 18 goes in free.
Of the twelve listings I carry, six reach the palace interior. Five of those six include admission in the price. The sixth states in its own inclusions that “Tickets are not included” and points you at the operator’s online shop — it is the small architect-led walk, and it spells that out up front. Booking it means two transactions rather than one, and if you compare its price against the tours that include the ticket you will compare the wrong two numbers. It is reviewed here and set beside the other eleven on every tour we list.
The park is free. Two hundred hectares of it, at every hour the gates are open, all year round — including the whole winter. It is the four small park palaces inside it that shut on 16 October. That distinction is on the park and the pavilions, and it is the single correction I most often have to make in person.
Where the facts come from
Prices, hours, closed days and the sentence about guided tours come from the Bavarian Palace Administration, which runs the building, and the Residenz figures on the comparison page come from the same administration’s site for the Residenz. Building history — Barelli, Zuccalli, Max Emanuel, Zimmermann’s ceiling, Stieler’s 36 portraits — comes from Wikipedia, and only where the operator says nothing. I say which is which. Tour details come from the twelve listing pages themselves, read in full rather than from their summaries, and quoted where the wording matters.
Reviewer quotes are verbatim, typing and emoji and all, and every one names the tour it was written about. That matters more here than on most sites, because two thirds of the ratings in my catalogue belong to the great day out at the Alpine castles — a different outing from an afternoon at this palace, so each set of reviews stays with its own day. It is all set out on the reviews page.
How long you need answers the visit-length question in terms of what there is to see and what the hours allow, and the transport details follow what the operator publishes.
The family, and Ludwig II
The family. Part of the palace is home and chancery for the head of the House of Wittelsbach, which is a fact the operator states and which belongs on who lives there. Private matters about living people are left out here. Ludwig II gets the same treatment: he was born in this palace on 25 August 1845, that is what is true here, and the rest of the legend belongs to buildings this site does not cover.
How the site pays for itself
If you book a tour through a link here, GetYourGuide pays me a small commission and you pay exactly what you would have paid anyway. That is the whole business model, and the disclosure page spells it out.
Corrections are welcome, and they are the messages I answer first. Hours move with the season, rooms close for restoration, a listing gets rewritten overnight. Tell me and I will fix the page.