The Most Beautiful Places in Bavaria
22 places · updated 14 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful places in Bavaria are Bamberg Cathedral, Walhalla, Donaustauf and Margravial Opera House. The list covers 22 places. Last updated 14 October 2026.
Bavaria is Germany's largest state and its most varied: the limestone wall of the Alps along the southern edge, the Danube cutting across the middle, and Franconian hill country to the north. It was a kingdom until 1918, and its Wittelsbach rulers, together with powerful prince-bishops and abbeys, spent lavishly on architecture. The result is an unusual density of Baroque and Rococo churches, royal palaces and the romantic fantasies of the nineteenth century, set against glacial lakes and mountain gorges.
Neuschwanstein, the castle Ludwig II built on a crag above the Pöllat gorge, is the most famous of those fantasies. His grandfather Ludwig I commissioned Walhalla, a marble temple modelled on the Parthenon that looks down on the Danube near Regensburg and honours notable figures of German history. In Bayreuth, the Margravial Opera House preserves a Baroque court theatre with its painted wooden interior. Upstream on the Danube, Weltenburg Abbey sits where the river squeezes through a limestone gorge, its church decorated by the Asam brothers, while Balthasar Neumann's Basilica of the Fourteen Holy Helpers is a high point of Franconian Rococo. In Munich, the Müllersches Volksbad is an Art Nouveau public bath.
The Alpine south adds water and rock. The red onion domes of St. Bartholomew's stand on a peninsula of the Königssee, with the quieter Obersee beyond. The Eibsee lies at the foot of the Zugspitze, Germany's highest mountain, and the Partnach Gorge near Garmisch-Partenkirchen is a narrow ravine of roaring water.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Bamberg Cathedral | Cathedral | |
| 2 | Walhalla, Donaustauf | Monument | |
| 3 | Margravial Opera House | Opera house | ✓ |
| 4 | Neuschwanstein Castle | Palace | ✓ |
| 5 | Weltenburg Abbey | Abbey | |
| 6 | St. Bartholomew's Church, Berchtesgaden | Pilgrimage site | |
| 7 | Basilica of the Fourteen Holy Helpers | Church building | |
| 8 | Müllersches Volksbad | Public bath | |
| 9 | Old Town Hall, Bamberg | Palace | |
| 10 | Obersee | Lake | |
| 11 | Eibsee | Lake | |
| 12 | Partnach Gorge | Canyon | |
| 13 | Antiquarium (Munich Residenz) | Library building | |
| 14 | Herrenchiemsee Palace | Palace | ✓ |
| 15 | Asam Church | Church building | |
| 16 | Burghausen Castle | Castle | |
| 17 | Lindau Lighthouse | Lighthouse | |
| 18 | Zugspitze Cable Car | Ski lift | |
| 19 | Würzburg Residence | Palace | ✓ |
| 20 | Linderhof Palace | Palace | ✓ |
| 21 | Wieskirche | Church building | ✓ |
| 22 | Plönlein | Pedestrian street |
01 Bamberg Cathedral
Bamberger Dom
Germany49.891° N 10.883° E
Ввласенко · CC BY-SA 3.0 Bamberg Cathedral, dedicated to Saints Peter and George, is the late Romanesque heart of the UNESCO World Heritage town of Bamberg in Upper Franconia.
02 Walhalla, Donaustauf
Walhalla
Germany · 7.7 km from Regensburg49.031° N 12.224° E
SimonWaldherr · CC BY-SA 4.0 Walhalla is a Greek temple on the Danube, raised by a Bavarian king to honour German-speaking greatness. Ludwig I conceived the idea in 1807, at the age of twenty, while still crown prince; once he came to the throne in 1825 he had it built, and the architect Leo von Klenze supervised the work from 1830 to 1842.
Did you know? The first bust, Copernicus by Johann Gottfried Schadow, was finished in 1807, and by 1825 some 60 busts existed before any building had begun.
03 Margravial Opera House
Markgräfliches Opernhaus
Germany49.944° N 11.579° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by juergenlaakmann from Pixabay Behind a sober sandstone facade on a street in central Bayreuth hides one of the most complete Baroque theatres in Europe.
Did you know? Parts of the interior are painted canvas stretched over the wood, a trick used to prevent cracks and improve the acoustics.
04 Neuschwanstein Castle
Schloss Neuschwanstein
Germany47.557° N 10.749° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by derwiki from Pixabay The name suggests a medieval stronghold; the building is closer to a 19th-century stage set with plumbing.
Did you know? Guinness World Records lists it, at 65 metres, as the tallest castle in the world.
05 Weltenburg Abbey
Benediktinerkloster Weltenburg
Germany · 25.8 km from Regensburg48.899° N 11.820° E
Image by tassilo111 from Pixabay Weltenburg has the strongest claim of any monastery in Bavaria to being the oldest: tradition dates its foundation to 617, by Agilus and Eustace, two monks trained under the Irish missionary Columbanus, who chose a peninsula in the Danube where the river narrows into a gorge — a site so naturally defensible and…
Did you know? For all its theatrical effect, the oval main space measures only about 19.5 by 14.5 metres, small for an abbey church, with its painted ceiling some 20 metres up.
06 St. Bartholomew's Church, Berchtesgaden
St. Bartholomä
Germany · 30 km from Salzburg47.545° N 12.973° E
Image by bc_dues from Pixabay St. Bartholomä is a small pilgrimage church on the small Hirschau peninsula, halfway along the western shore of the Königssee in the Berchtesgaden Alps. Its red onion domes set against dark water and the huge east face of the Watzmann behind make it one of the classic images of the Bavarian Alps.
Did you know? The neighbouring inn grew out of a 14th-century house of the prince-provosts' fish master, later turned into a hunting lodge.
07 Basilica of the Fourteen Holy Helpers
Basilika Vierzehnheiligen
Germany · 17.9 km from Coburg50.116° N 11.054° E
Ermell · CC BY-SA 4.0 Above the valley of the Main in Upper Franconia, a tall twin-towered sandstone façade glows golden against the wooded hillside; inside, the church opens into a bright, flowing space of white, gold and pastel, with a free-standing altar in the middle of the nave like a coral reef of stucco and statues.
Did you know? The vault shell was designed to be only about 12 centimetres thick, and few believed it would last, yet it survived even a devastating fire.
08 Müllersches Volksbad
Germany · 1.1 km from Munich48.132° N 11.588° E
Burkhard Mücke · CC BY-SA 4.0 The Müller'sches Volksbad is a swimming bath that looks like a palace, and it was built for exactly the opposite clientele. The Munich engineer Karl Müller gave the city the money for it on one condition: that it become a bath for the poor, at a time when most working-class homes had nowhere to wash.
Did you know? Two days before the opening, the Prince Regent Luitpold knighted the donor, who attended the ceremony as Karl Ritter von Müller.
09 Old Town Hall, Bamberg
Altes Rathaus
Germany49.892° N 10.887° E
Image by anaterate from Pixabay Bamberg's Old Town Hall does not stand on a square or a street but in the middle of a river.
Did you know? Its porcelain treasures belong to the collection of Peter and Irene Ludwig, on permanent loan to Bamberg's city museums since 1995.
10 Obersee
Germany · 33 km from Salzburg47.516° N 12.988° E
Alupus · CC BY-SA 3.0 Behind the far end of the Königssee, across a short neck of moraine, lies a second, smaller lake that feels like the last room of the Alps. The Obersee, "upper lake", fills the floor of a cirque in the Berchtesgaden Alps in the far southeast of Bavaria, its long sides walled by rock faces about a thousand metres high.
Did you know? The moraine barrier separating it from the Königssee is about 700 metres long and 800 metres wide.
11 Eibsee
Germany · 38.4 km from Innsbruck47.458° N 10.973° E
Image by TiBine from Pixabay At the foot of the Zugspitze, Germany's highest mountain, the Eibsee spreads in green, glass-clear water dotted with small wooded islands, while the limestone walls of the Wetterstein range rise almost 2,000 metres above its southern shore. It is widely counted among the most beautiful lakes of the Bavarian Alps.
Did you know? In 1871 Hermann von Barth described local children firing a pistol for visitors to wake a sevenfold echo off the nearby rock walls.
12 Partnach Gorge
Partnachklamm
Germany · 29.6 km from Innsbruck47.463° N 11.124° E
Richard Bartz · CC BY-SA 2.5 The Partnach Gorge is a narrow slot cut by the Partnach stream into the limestone just south of Garmisch-Partenkirchen, and walking through it feels like being swallowed by the mountain.
Did you know? The lumpy Triassic limestone of the walls, about 240 million years old, still shows burrows and feeding traces left by ancient sea creatures.
13 Antiquarium (Munich Residenz)
Antiquarium
Germany · 1.1 km from Munich48.141° N 11.579° E
Wilfredor · CC0 The Antiquarium in the Munich Residenz is a single barrel-vaulted hall 66 metres long, and it is often called the largest and most lavish Renaissance interior north of the Alps.
Did you know? The continuous barrel vault is lit by 17 pairs of windows, whose recesses carry much of the painted survey of the duchy.
14 Herrenchiemsee Palace
Neues Schloss Herrenchiemsee
Germany · 20.2 km from Rosenheim47.860° N 12.402° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by holzijue from Pixabay On an island in the Chiemsee in southern Bavaria, King Ludwig II of Bavaria tried to build his own Versailles.
Did you know? The ceiling of the Hall of Mirrors carries 25 paintings that celebrate Louis XIV, the king Ludwig revered.
15 Asam Church
Asamkirche
Germany · 0.5 km from Munich48.135° N 11.570° E
Wikiolo , derivative work Lämpel · CC BY-SA 4.0 Behind a narrow façade squeezed between the town houses of Sendlinger Straße in Munich lies a small church conceived as a single work of art. Officially St.
Did you know? The church was consecrated on 1 May 1746 while it was still unfinished.
16 Burghausen Castle
Burg zu Burghausen
Germany48.156° N 12.829° E
C.Stadler/Bwag · CC BY-SA 4.0 Burghausen Castle is, by a wide margin, the longest castle complex in the world: its walls, courtyards and towers run for 1,051 metres along a narrow ridge above the Salzach, a length confirmed by Guinness World Records.
Did you know? The inner castle chapel, built in 1255, is regarded as the oldest early Gothic church in southern Bavaria.
17 Lindau Lighthouse
Leuchtturm Lindau
Germany · 6.9 km from Bregenz47.543° N 9.684° E
Image by maxmann from Pixabay Lindau's lighthouse stands at the end of the western breakwater of the harbour of Lindau island, facing the Bavarian Lion on the opposite mole, and the two together form one of the most photographed harbour entrances on Lake Constance. It is the only lighthouse in Bavaria and the southernmost in Germany.
Did you know? The 139 steps climb through five storeys on wooden staircases, past walls hung with old drawings and stories about Lindau and the lake.
18 Zugspitze Cable Car
Seilbahn Zugspitze
Germany · 37.1 km from Innsbruck47.457° N 10.992° E
Maksym Kozlenko · CC BY-SA 4.0 Most cable cars are a way up a mountain; the Seilbahn Zugspitze is an engineering landmark in its own right, and the ride itself is the reason to come.
Did you know? Engineers expect the carrying ropes to last 50 to 70 years, while the thinner hauling ropes that pull the cabins are replaced every 10 to 12 years.
19 Würzburg Residence
Würzburger Residenz
Germany · 1.2 km from Würzburg49.793° N 9.939° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by Katerwursty from Pixabay The Würzburg Residence was built for the prince-bishops of Würzburg, rulers of a small ecclesiastical state on the Main who wanted a palace to stand beside those of kings. Prince-Bishop Johann Philipp Franz von Schönborn commissioned it in 1720; the shell was finished by 1744 and the interiors by 1780.
Did you know? Napoleon stayed here three times between 1806 and 1813 and, according to tradition, called it the largest parsonage in Europe.
20 Linderhof Palace
Schloss Linderhof
Germany47.572° N 10.961° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by Frenchy3000 from Pixabay Linderhof is the smallest of the three palaces that King Ludwig II of Bavaria built for himself, and the only one he saw finished and actually lived in. It stands alone in the Graswang valley in the Ammergau Alps, a largely empty mountain valley where his father, King Maximilian II, had kept a modest hunting lodge.
Did you know? A linden tree roughly 300 years old was kept standing in the middle of the formal gardens when they were laid out.
21 Wieskirche
Germany47.681° N 10.900° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by dozemode from Pixabay From the outside the Wieskirche is almost modest: a pale church with a restrained exterior, standing alone in a meadow in the foothills of the Bavarian Alps, with farms, pastures and wooded hills around it. Step through the door and the effect is overwhelming.
Did you know? The main ceiling fresco shows Christ as judge on a rainbow, with heaven's gate still closed and the judgement throne still empty: the Last Judgement has not yet begun.
22 Plönlein
Germany49.374° N 10.180° E
Image by maxmann from Pixabay The Plönlein is barely a square at all — just a small, slightly sloping triangle where a street in Rothenburg ob der Tauber splits in two — yet it has become the single most recognisable view of medieval Germany. A narrow half-timbered house stands at the fork like the prow of a ship.
Did you know? Rothenburg's streets served as a set for Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, shot here in July 1967, and the town's crime museum keeps two of the film's prison wagons.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful places in Bavaria?
- On our list, Bamberg Cathedral ranks first, followed by Walhalla, Donaustauf and Margravial Opera House.
- Who built Neuschwanstein Castle?
- Neuschwanstein was commissioned by King Ludwig II of Bavaria, with construction starting in 1869. It was never fully completed, and it opened to the public shortly after his death in 1886.
- What is Walhalla in Bavaria?
- Walhalla is a hall of fame built for King Ludwig I and designed by Leo von Klenze in the form of a Greek temple. Opened in 1842 above the Danube, it holds busts and plaques of prominent figures from German history.
- What kinds of places are there to see in Bavaria?
- In our collection, the places in Bavaria are most often palaces (5), churches (4), country houses (3) and museums (3).
- How many places are on this list in Bavaria?
- The list covers 22 places.