Germany Guide
The Alps and eastern Bavaria
Schloss Herrenchiemsee
Opening time: Guided tours of Schloss daily: April to mid-Oct 9am–6pm, last tour 5pm; mid-Oct to March 9.40am–4.15pm, last tour 3.40pm
Price: €7, includes admission to König Ludwig II Museum and Augustiner Chorherrenstift
The largest of Chiemsee's islands, HERRENINSEL, is also its greatest visitor magnet thanks to "Mad" King Ludwig II's splendidly deranged attempt to build a copy of the palace of Versailles on it. The result is Schloss Herrenchiemsee. Construction began in 1878 to the plans of Georg Dollmann, but the Schloss was still unfinished when the king died in 1886, when construction abruptly stopped. The result is a tragi-comic testament to Ludwig's obsession with the French "Sun King" Louis XIV, whose image and fleur-de-lys motif are repeated in the Schloss's decor. The tour begins with bare brick, progresses through unimaginable opulence – including, of course, a hundred-metre-long copy of the Hall of Mirrors – and encounters bare brick again on an unfinished staircase, the minimalist yin to the lavish main staircase's chandeliered yang. Throughout, the decorative theme appears to have been that, when it comes to gold leaf, more is more. Ludwig only spent ten days here, and though the interiors have a festive look this was very far from a festive place when he stayed. Famously misanthropic, the king was also afraid of the dark, and would stay awake by candlelight, retiring to bed during the day. Highlights of the tour include Ludwig's beautiful but ludicrous 60,000-litre bath, which took hours to fill. The exhibits of the König Ludwig II Museum (same ticket) include various portraits of the king, furnishings from his apartments in the Residenz in Munich, a model of Gottfried Semper's theatre for Richard Wagner – which was never built – and fascinating images of the winter garden Ludwig had built atop the Residenz in Munich, complete with a lake on which floated a royal barge. At the end, it's hard to escape the conclusion that "Extravagant" would have been a more accurate description of him than "Mad". Your ticket also admits you to the Baroque Augustiner Chorherrenstift (daily: April to mid-Oct 9am–6pm; mid-Oct to March 10am–4.45pm), which boasts a splendid Kaisersaal with trompe l'oeil frescoes and a museum documenting the building's history, including a section on the meeting that laid the basis for West Germany's postwar constitution, which took place here in 1948. There's also an art gallery (daily April to mid-Oct 9am–6pm) devoted to the works of the Munich Secessionist Julius Exter.
Frequent lake steamers of the Chiemsee Schifffahrt (€6.50 return; 08051/60 90, www.chiemsee-schifffahrt.de) connect Prien with Herreninsel all year round, though in winter sailings can be halted by ice on the lake. The Schloss is a good twenty-minute walk from the landing stage; you buy your tickets at the cash desk close to the landing stage, which is where you'll also find toilets and refreshments.