Visiting Schloss Linderhof: hours, the two half-years, and what is shut

The Moorish Kiosk, first, because people plan around it

The administration is not hiding this and nor am I: the Moorish Kiosk is under renovation, wrapped in scaffolding, and can be seen neither from the outside nor from the inside. If it is the reason you were coming, it is not there to be seen, and no ticket, season or time of day changes that.

On when it comes back, read the administration’s own sentence rather than anybody else’s summary of it. It says it hopes to make the interior accessible again “zum Saisonbeginn 2028” — by the start of the 2028 season. That is a hope, not a date, and a hope about a building site four years out is worth exactly what it says. Do not plan a 2028 trip around it either.

It is worth saying plainly because it is the park building people have a picture of in their heads. The park buildings page has what is standing, what opens when, and what the Kiosk is when it comes back.

No photographs indoors, and this catches almost everybody

You may not take photographs or video inside. Not in the palace, not in the Venus Grotto, not in the Royal Lodge. Outside in the park, photography for your own use is free.

The administration puts it in one sentence on its own visitor page: “In Schloss Linderhof, in der Venusgrotte, im Königshäuschen und im Königshaus am Schachen sind Foto- und Videoaufnahmen leider nicht gestattet.” It names four buildings and three of them are here — the palace, the Venus Grotto and the Royal Lodge. The fourth, the King’s House on the Schachen, is a mountain away.

People find this out at the door with a phone already in their hand, and it lands hardest on the ones who came for a particular room. Twenty-five minutes, eleven rooms, and nothing to take away but what you looked at. You should know that before you drive rather than at the threshold. What to see has the rooms, and a fact about photographs of this palace that follows from the rule.

Outside is a different matter. The park, the terraces, the parterres, the cascade, the fountains, the outside of every building — photograph all of it, for your own use, freely. Which is one more reason the park is the longer half of this day.

The two half-years, side by side

This is the whole of the opening-hours question. Everything else is a detail of it.

Note where the ticket desk shuts against where the palace shuts. In winter the last ticket goes at four and the palace runs to half past; in summer the desk closes half an hour before the palace does. Arriving at the desk at the palace’s closing time is arriving too late, in both halves of the year. Summer or winter works through what the winter half actually costs you.

The five days nothing opens

1 January, Shrove Tuesday, and 24, 25 and 31 December. Shrove Tuesday is the one that catches people, because it moves with Easter and it is a working day everywhere else they have been that week.

Can you go inside? Yes, and only one way

The palace can be seen only on a guided tour. There is no wandering through it with an audioguide and no self-guided route. Tours leave every five to ten minutes, run about 25 minutes, take a maximum of 40 people at a time, and are given in German and English.

Five to ten minutes is a good frequency and it is why the queue here rarely behaves like the queue at a bigger palace. It also tells you how short the thing you are queueing for is. How long you need has the honest arithmetic of a day here, and the answer is that the park takes longer than the palace by a wide margin.

The grotto is a separate ticket, and a separate season

The Venus Grotto has its own ticket, its own tour and its own queue. Those tours take a maximum of 50 people, leave every 20 minutes and last about 15 minutes. There is a combination ticket that covers the palace and the grotto together, and both the grotto ticket and the combination ticket are summer only. The grotto page has what it is and why it is the thing worth coming for; tickets has the published tariff.

Bags, pushchairs, and what you cannot bring

There are lockers for rucksacks and camera equipment: the large ones are opposite the castle hotel and there are smaller ones by the toilets. Pushchairs and baby carriers are left at the palace entrance. The administration accepts no liability for what is stored, which is the usual wording and worth reading as the usual wording — do not leave anything in a locker you would mind losing.

And one rule for the park rather than the building: no drones and no model aircraft. The park sits inside a nature conservation area.

The park is free, and the fountains keep a timetable

The park buildings that are open need no ticket, and neither does the park. You can walk the terraces, the parterres and the paths up the hillside without buying anything at all, which is worth knowing if you are travelling with people who would rather not spend 25 minutes indoors in a group of forty.

The fountains play April to October, every half hour between 9:00 and 18:00. The administration adds that capacity may be reduced by water shortage, and I am keeping that hedge rather than tidying it away: the half-hour is the schedule, not a promise. In a dry August you may get less than the schedule says.

If you are coming from Munich

The palace charges about eleven euros at its own window and sells that ticket at its own desk. What the booking platforms sell is not that ticket — it is the day out, with the palace attached to the end of it. That is a real product and for a lot of people it is the right one, because the hard part of Linderhof is not the admission, it is getting to a valley the trains do not reach. Getting there has the bus from Oberammergau.

The listing most people book is the Munich day trip that takes in Neuschwanstein first and Linderhof after it. Read its inclusion list to the end before you assume you are getting in: the castle entry tickets sit there as “Neuschwanstein and Linderhof Castle entry tickets (if option selected)”, which is the listing’s own wording and not the same thing as included. What each listing does about admission works through all of them.

Read next

• Summer or winter — what the winter half-year actually costs you.
• The park buildings — including the one you cannot see at all.
• What to see, in the order you meet it.
• Tickets — the published tariff, and what each listing does about admission.

Frequently asked questions