Herrenchiemsee Palace

A Relaxing Day at the Island Palace on Bavaria’s Largest Lake

This is perhaps our most relaxing day tour: a pleasant drive and boat ride to see a magnificent palace on an island in the middle of Chiemsee (Lake Chiem), which is the largest body of water in Bavaria. The Herrenchiemsee Palace is the third of King Ludwig II’s famous buildings, and is basically his version of Versailles, which was built almost 200 years earlier by his idol Louis XIV of France. It is a sumptuous and lavish palace with beautiful gardens and fountains in the most unlikely of settings. The palace was never finished; Ludwig’s complete failure to manage his finances led to construction being halted and greaty contributed to his removal from the throne. There is a real ‘aha’ moment at the end of the inside tour when you see where the money ran out – a completely bare brick room. An art gallery is now in other unfinished rooms.

The island was home to an erstwhile very important monastery that traces its roots to the year 630. It is now called the “Old Palace”, because King Ludwig lived there while inspecting the construction progress. The restaurant there is one of our lunch options.

We normally have lunch, however, on the neighboring and much smaller island, the pretty Fraueninsel, which is a village with lovely flower gardens, artists’ shops and a few restaurants. The 15. 5-hectare (38-acre) large Fraueninsel is car free and home to 300 permanent residents as well as an active Benedictine convent. Adhering to trradition, the nuns still make their own licqueurs. At the center of the island is an elm tree said to be a thousand years old.

Sometimes there is time enough to drive the pretty way back and stop for a coffee or tea in one of the quaint Bavarian villages along the way. We can even work in a visit to an open air farmhouse museum or one of the best independent automobile museums in Germany.

Chiemsee Gallery