Who owns Nymphenburg Palace, and does anyone live there?
Two answers, and they are both true at once. Nymphenburg is a Bavarian state palace, open to the public and administered by the Bavarian Palace Administration, which sets the hours, prints the tariff and runs the museums. It is also home and chancery for the head of the House of Wittelsbach. That second part is private, it is not on any ticket, and it is not on the route a visitor walks.
Who runs it day to day
The Bavarian Palace Administration, which also runs the Munich Residenz and a long list of other state palaces, gardens and lakes. It is the body whose opening-hours page carries the sentence this whole site turns on: “There are no regular guided tours.” It sets the two seasons, the tariff, the thirty-minute last entry and the five closed days in the year, and it is the authority on all of them — more so than any listing that sells a ticket to the building. Its published figures are in the table on the tickets page.
The same administration runs the Residenz in the city centre, which is why the two palaces close on the same five days and why the comparison between them is a fair one to make. It is set out on Residenz or Nymphenburg.
The part that is lived in
The palace is described as home and chancery for the head of the House of Wittelsbach, the family whose electors and kings built and extended it. That is a working residence and a working office inside a building that also sells tickets at a desk, which is more common among European palaces than visitors assume and less remarked on than it deserves to be.
What this page will not do is tell you where. No claim about which rooms, which wing, which windows. The reason is simple enough: that is somebody’s home, the operator does not publish it, and a guess dressed as a fact would be both an invention and an intrusion. The same applies to the family itself. This site states who owns the palace and that part of it is a private residence and chancery, and stops there — no succession, no titles, no biography of anybody living.
If you want the room where a Wittelsbach story actually happened and is documented, it is the Queen’s bedroom, where Ludwig II was born on 25 August 1845. That one is on the public route and on the ticket — see born here.
So what do you actually get to walk through?
The palace itself, with the Steinerner Saal through the centre and the Gallery of Beauties in the inner southern pavilion. The Marstallmuseum and the Museum of Nymphenburg Porcelain across the courtyard. The four park palaces in the grounds, from April to 15 October. And two hundred hectares of park, free, from six in the morning in every season. That is a large amount of a lived-in palace to be let into, and the proportion that is private is not something a visitor notices from the inside.
One reviewer of the guided tour at the other palace caught the general point rather well: “El Palacio es un lugar lleno de historia de la aristocracia que por mucho años lo habito.” — Miriam, United States, August 2026, on Munich: Residenz Palace and Hofgarten Skip-the-Line Tour. A palace full of the history of the people who lived in it for many years, which is the case at both addresses.
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What is on the public route is on what you actually walk through, and what the building is known for is on what Nymphenburg is famous for.
Frequently asked questions
Who lives in Nymphenburg Palace now?
The palace is a Bavarian state palace, open to the public and administered by the Bavarian Palace Administration. It is also home and chancery for the head of the House of Wittelsbach. That part is private, it is not included in any ticket, and this site makes no claim about which rooms it occupies. What is open to visitors is listed on what you actually walk through.
Does the Bavarian royal family still own Nymphenburg?
No. The palace belongs to the Bavarian state and is run by the Bavarian Palace Administration, the same body that runs the Munich Residenz. It is separately described as home and chancery for the head of the House of Wittelsbach. This site goes no further than that on the present family. The tariff and the seasons are on the tickets page.
Can you visit the part where the family lives?
No. Nothing of the private residence and chancery is on any ticket. What the combination ticket opens is the palace, the Marstallmuseum with the Museum of Nymphenburg Porcelain, and from April to 15 October the four park palaces; the two-hundred-hectare park behind them is free. See the park and its pavilions.