Munich

Europe: Munich

Munich is with 1.35M inhabitants Germany's third largest city after Berlin & Hamburg. The city is located in the state Bavaria in south-east Germany. The first day of our Eastern Europe trip we drove 770km from early morning to be able to visit the Neuschwanstein & Hohenschwangau castle area in the afternoon. First, two pictures of Hohenschwangau, which was originally built by the Schwangau knights on the remains of fortress Schwanstein in the 12th century, later restored by King Maximilian II of Bavaria in 1837:

The main attraction in this area is the Neuschwanstein castle, which you can see from the village:

Next to the castle there is a small bridge from which you can see past the castle and into the rocky area below:

In the castle itself you cannot take photographs... Here is an aerial picture of the main castle - not by myself, but it shows really well where I did take pix on the outside:

On the right you can see a curving path from where you enter the castle.

The castle looks out on lake Starnberg, where Ludwig II of Bavaria who commisioned the building in 1886, was found dead together with his personal physician/physiatrist, Dr. von Gudden in June that same year. The foundation stone of the building was laid September 5, 1869 - the castle was meant to be a retreat but is now visited by 1.3M each year! The photo below shows the Starnberg lake as well as the Hohenschwangau castle:

The second day in Munich we started off with a visit to the Nymphenburg Palace (commissioned in 1664) - with excellent weather:

Which offcourse includes a stroll in the park behind it:

Next we headed for Munich itself, St. Peter's Church - where its tower provides a 360 view of the city (after a few steps...), here is a view of the St. Lucas church:

Shown here is Munich's new Town hall at St. Marien place (built between 1867 and 1909, covering 9000+ m2 and 400 rooms) with in the back the yellow Theatinerkirche: