About this site, and who writes it
An independent guide to one building: Schloss Linderhof, in the Graswangtal above Ettal. It is the smallest of Ludwig II’s three palaces and the only one he lived to see finished, you can see the inside of it only on a guided tour of about twenty-five minutes, and the palace charges about eleven euros at its own window. No affiliation with the palace administration, no relationship with any tour operator, and no tickets sold here.
Who writes it
Schloss Linderhof is an independent guide to visiting one palace, and each fact is credited to its source: the Bavarian Palace Administration’s own pages, an encyclopedia, a listing on a booking platform, or a reviewer. The tariff and the opening hours are checked against the administration’s own tariff before each season.
Two things on this site are opinions and are marked as such. The palace is smaller than most people expect, and every page that matters says so rather than letting anybody find out at the door. And the valley is half the reason to come: the park is free to walk, the fountains play on the half hour through the summer, and the Graswangtal is better than most of what you will queue for in Bavaria.
Four principles behind this site
What a listing crosses out counts as much as what it promises. The booking platform draws inclusions and exclusions in one block, so read as plain running text an exclusion turns into a promise. Every page here shows both lists separately. For example, two listings put Linderhof in the itinerary and then say, in their own exclusions, “Admission to Linderhof Palace *usually only an exterior visit”, and two separate listings file a line saying tickets are NOT included inside their INCLUSION lists, the second bullet of three and the third bullet of three. Sources explains how that is handled and all tours prints every listing’s exclusions so you can check it.
The door price and the platform price are both printed, and never divided into each other. The palace charges about eleven euros. The cheapest listing whose own page offers you a way inside is about seventy-six euros. Those are different products: one is a ticket, the other is a full day’s transport with the palace on the route. What the difference buys is the journey, and getting there is where that argument is made properly. Taking the bus from Oberammergau and paying at the window is one way to go; booking a coach buys you the whole day.
And the word cheapest gets said carefully, because it means three different things in this catalogue. About seventy-one euros is the cheapest listing that names Linderhof at all, and its own exclusions say you stay outside. About seventy-six euros is the cheapest whose page offers you a way in, behind “(if option selected)”. Just under two hundred euros is the cheapest that describes the palace visit with nothing attached. Every page here writes whichever one it means and says which.
A star average never travels without its base. Ten of the eighteen listings that name Linderhof carry fewer than twenty-five ratings and five carry none at all, while one coach holds ninety per cent of every rating in the set. A 5.0 from two ratings and a 4.6 from sixteen thousand are not the same claim, so the number of ratings goes in the same sentence as the average, on every page and every card. The reviews page sets out the rating counts, including the six listings with no written review yet.
The palace administration does not publish visitor numbers for Hohenschwangau, because Hohenschwangau is not its building: under the 1923 settlement Linderhof went to the Free State of Bavaria and Hohenschwangau went to the Wittelsbach family foundation, which is also why its tickets are sold by a different office. So that cell on the comparison page stays empty. No source consulted here gives a road distance or a drive time from Munich. The administration’s own biography of Ludwig II gives no height, so his page says that rather than repeating figures that circulate online. And his death is an open dispute, so that page gives the official ruling, the physical findings and the dispute.
How it pays for itself
Booking links go to GetYourGuide, which pays a commission on bookings made through them. You pay the same either way. The palace sells its own ticket at its own window for about eleven euros, and this site tells you which bus goes there. The affiliate disclosure is the long version.
Corrections are welcome and get acted on. Contact is the way in, and a figure that has gone out of date is the most useful thing anyone can send.