The story of this place
Begun in 1664 to celebrate the birth of a long-awaited heir, Nymphenburg grew into a vast Baroque summer residence for Bavaria's rulers, its frontage stretching over half a kilometre. King Ludwig I filled its south pavilion with the 'Gallery of Beauties', 36 portraits of the era's most attractive women — the most notorious being the Irish dancer Lola Montez, whose scandalous affair with the king helped topple him in the revolutions of 1848. King Ludwig II, builder of Neuschwanstein, was born here in 1845. The palace park, laid out first as a formal French garden and later as an English landscape, still hides Baroque hunting lodges among its canals and lakes.