Book Schwangau tours & attraction tickets

Few villages in Germany carry as much visual weight as Schwangau. Sitting at roughly 800 metres above sea level in the Ostallgäu district of Bavaria, it occupies a fold of the Bavarian Alps where the Ammergau and Allgäu ranges meet, and where two lakes, the Alpsee and the Schwansee, reflect the limestone peaks above them. The population numbers only a few thousand, yet the place draws visitors from every corner of the world, almost all of them arriving with their eyes fixed on the ridge above the village.

Neuschwanstein Castle is the reason, and it is worth being direct about that. Ludwig II of Bavaria commissioned the building in 1869, intending it as a private retreat inspired by the operas of Richard Wagner and by a Romanticist vision of medieval German kinghood that was already anachronistic when the foundations were laid. Ludwig died in 1886 before the castle was finished, and within weeks of his death the Bavarian state opened it to paying visitors. The interior, which includes the elaborately painted Singers' Hall and the Byzantine-influenced Throne Room, was designed as theatrical scenery as much as living space, and it reads that way in person. The approach on foot from the village takes around thirty to forty minutes along a well-maintained path, or visitors can take a horse-drawn carriage partway up the hill, an option that several of the tickadoo experiences in the catalogue combine with a guided tour and timed entry.