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 smaller of the two palace park lakes, the Pagodenburger See, was completed in 1813. It is named after the Pagodenburg, which lies in the northern part of the lake on an island formed by a ring-shaped canal. The area of the lake, including the island of about one hectare, is 2.9 hectares.

The octagonal floor plan of the Pagodenburg on a small island in the lake named after it was designed by Elector Max Emanuel. Master builder Joseph Effner completed the design and supervised the construction of the pleasure palace from 1716 to 1719. In 1767 it was rebuilt in the Rococo style. The name comes from the decoration of the interiors with Asian motifs. Consequently, the rooms are called "Chinese Salon" or "Chinese Cabinet".

Joseph Effner planned the Great Cascade, which was built in 1717. The water falls from a two-part water staircase, the first step of which is semicircular towards the west, and the second, lower step is shaped towards the east. The cascade continues the symmetry through the central channel. Originally, flanking architecture was planned, but it was never executed. Instead, four sculptures of Greek gods were relocated here from the Großer Parterre at the end of the 18th century.

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.

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.

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.

Greek mythology served as the inspiration for the pictorial program of the Nymphenburg Garden, created in the 18th century: The sculptures represent the sixteen main deities of Olympus. However, their placement was changed with the redesign into an English landscape park. Today, only twelve statues remain in the garden parterre; four were moved to the Great Cascade. Male and female deities alternate.