The best waterfall hikes and walks around Allacher Forest

If you've always wanted to know what Nymphenburg Palace looks like from behind and from a great distance, this is the right place.

The Nymphenburger Schlossrondell is a historic, listed ensemble with four courtiers' houses designed by Joseph Effner from the 18th century. From here, there is a spectacular view of the palace, the basin, and the fountain. The houses are partly used for events. The Rondell development, which originated from the two outer buildings and was completed after 1730 under Elector Karl Albrecht, son of Max Emanuel, in front of the main wing, was considered an architectural sensation in its time. Ten palaces are located here, symmetrically divided into two groups of five, which were built between 1728 and 1758 for higher court officials.

For centuries, the Badenburg at the southeastern end of the Great Lake was the first major building in Europe exclusively dedicated to the purpose of enjoying a comfortable bath. Joseph Effner planned the pleasure palace and built it from 1718 to 1722. In addition to the large bathing hall, which extends over two floors, it also contains a ballroom and an electoral apartment with a bedroom, writing room, and dressing room. The bathing pool, over fifty square meters in size and holding 80,000 liters of water, was unparalleled in its time, not only as a work of art but also in technical terms.

Removed from time, the goat-god Pan rests on an artificial hill and plays his shepherd's flute, which is now mostly called the Pan flute after him. A billy goat lies next to him, seemingly listening to the sounds. Peter Simon Lamine created the sculpture in 1815 from Carrara marble. The "Pan Monument", as early historians called the group, crowns an artificial spring. It is the outflow of the Great Lake, which pours with a small waterfall into the Teufelsbach, which continues to the northeast.

The two-story Grüner Brunnhaus, a pumping station in the Nymphenburg Palace Garden, was supplemented in the second half of the 18th century by additional single-story small farmhouses. These are the Hirschgartenbrunnhaus, the Brunnwärterhaus, and the Biberwärterhaus. Some of them are still inhabited today. The buildings in the "village" were intended to represent the idealized notion of country life and to satisfy the court's longing for the supposed idyll of the world of farmers and shepherds.

Until the construction of the stone Temple of Apollo between 1862 and 1865, a round wooden temple stood twice on the headland. The first was erected in 1805 for the Elector Princess's birthday. When it had become dilapidated, a slightly larger replacement structure made of larch wood was built in 1818. The current Temple of Apollo, a monopteros with ten columns in the Corinthian style made of grey-beige sandstone, was designed by Leo von Klenze. Inside, there is a marble stele with a dedication from Ludwig I.

Elector Karl Albrecht gifted his wife Amalie this Rococo building named after her, erected according to the plans of François Cuvilliés from 1734 to 1739 as a small hunting lodge for pheasant hunting. The Amalienburg is a typical late Baroque pleasure palace.

The birth of the Bavarian Prince-Elector Max Emanuel from the House of Wittelsbach in 1662 was the occasion for the construction of a palace with a garden in the area between the villages of Neuhausen and Obermenzing as a gift for the young mother, Electorress Henriette Adelaide of Savoy. The foundation stone for the "Schwaigbau zu Nymphenburg" was laid in 1664. The complex was designed as a pleasure palace in the style of Italian country villas; it only became a Baroque palace complex, which could serve as a summer residence and an alternative to the seat of government, the Munich Residenz, a generation later under Max Emanuel. The model for Nymphenburg was the Piedmontese hunting lodge La Venaria, whose architect Amedeo Castellamonte (1613 to 1683) also provided the initial designs for Nymphenburg.