Nymphenburg Palace: Opening Hours, Tickets, Park and Museums

The Nymphenburg Palace complex: 7 sites, several ticket desks

The table below puts side by side what is otherwise spread across the websites of three operators: what each site costs on its own, whether it is inside the combined ticket, and when it opens in summer and in winter. 2 of the 7 sites are closed in winter and 2 cost nothing at all. Use the filters to narrow it down to what is actually available on the day you are there.

Three bodies share the grounds. The Bavarian Palace Department runs the palace, the Marstallmuseum, the park pavilions and the park. The Bavarian Natural History Collections run the Museum of Man and Nature and the botanical garden. The porcelain manufactory belongs to neither. There is therefore no single ticket covering everything, and that is the most common planning mistake here.

The combined ticket saves 4 € in summer but only 2 € in winter, because the pavilions it covers are shut then.

Seasons

Nymphenburg Palace opening hours: the winter half-year is the real trap

Foto: Photographer: Mosbatho · CC BY 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

The Nymphenburg Palace opening hours follow two half-years. From April to 15 October the palace is open daily from 9am to 6pm; from 16 October to March only from 10am to 4pm, six hours instead of nine. Last admission everywhere is 30 minutes before closing, which on a short winter afternoon is the difference between a visit and a wasted trip. The whole estate is closed on 1 January, Shrove Tuesday, and 24, 25 and 31 December.

What matters more is what does not open at all in the winter half-year: the four park pavilions. Amalienburg, Badenburg, Pagodenburg and the Magdalenenklause are shut from 16 October to March, and with them goes the part of the estate that locals often rate higher than the palace. The Sckell exhibition and the historic pump houses are summer-only too. Come in January and you get the main building, the Marstallmuseum and the park. That is the whole list.

Two current restrictions on top of that. The lacquer cabinet in the Electress’s apartment (room 13) is closed for restoration until autumn 2026; every other state room can be seen without limitation. And the fountain in the Great Parterre stays out of service through 2026 while the water wheel in the Grünes Brunnhaus is repaired. The remaining fountains run from Easter to mid-October, daily 10am–12pm and 2pm–4pm.

Nymphenburg Palace tickets: when the combined ticket pays

The combined “Nymphenburg” ticket costs 20 € from 1 April to mid-October and 16 € from mid-October to 31 March, or 18 € and 14 € reduced. It covers the palace, the Marstallmuseum with the porcelain collection, and the park pavilions. Bought separately those three come to 24 € in summer, so the ticket saves 4 €, but only if you actually get round all three.

Nymphenburg Palace tickets for a specific day and time can be booked online in advance, which on a summer weekend is worth doing: the timed slots are what runs out, not the building.

In winter that sum turns over. The pavilions are closed, so the ticket really only covers two sites worth 18 € together, and the saving shrinks to 2 €. If you only want to see the main building in the winter half-year, the single 10 € ticket is cheaper. Children and young people under 18 pay nothing at any of the seven sites.

Two practical points about Nymphenburg palace tickets that regularly cause trouble at the gate. The palace is timed-entry only; the Marstallmuseum and the pavilions are not. And the pavilion ticket is not sold at the pavilions; you buy it at the palace or Marstallmuseum desk, or online. Walk into the park first and you will be walking back. An audio guide for the main building costs 3.50 € and comes in 10 languages; there are no scheduled guided tours.

Nymphenburg Palace Park is free, but the gates close early

Nymphenburg Palace Park is open to anyone without a ticket, which is the real reason the estate fills half a day even if you never buy anything. It runs a good two kilometres west from the palace, with the canal cutting dead straight through the middle and an English landscape garden on either side: lakes, streams and the four pavilions. The main gate opens at 6am all year. It closes at 9.30pm from May to September, 8pm in April and October, and already at 6pm from November to March. The other gates close half an hour earlier.

One thing about the park surprises most visitors: it has been open to the public since 1792, long before that was normal anywhere else. In practice it means a winter day here is still worth it. The park is open, the canal freezes in cold years, and ice stock shooting on it has a following of its own. Just without the pavilions.

The museums around the palace

The Marstallmuseum in the southern courtyard buildings holds the state coaches and sleighs of the Bavarian electors and kings, including those of Ludwig II. Upstairs in the same building hangs the Nymphenburg Porcelain Museum with the Bäuml collection. And this is where the most common mix-up on the estate happens. The museum porcelain is in the Marstallmuseum, not at the manufactory. The manufactory at Nördliches Schlossrondell 8, 80638 München is a working business with a shop, not a museum with an admission ticket.

Two more museums sit in the same crescent but belong to other bodies and need their own tickets. The Museum of Man and Nature in the north wing is the cheapest thing on the estate at 3.50 €, or one euro on Sundays; it closes on Mondays and does not take cards. The Munich Botanical Garden on the northern edge of the park costs 5.50 €, with an exception hardly anyone knows about: in the winter half-year the outdoor garden is free and you only pay for the glasshouses.

Foto: High Contrast · CC BY 3.0 de · Wikimedia Commons

Getting there

Getting there and parking

Two equally good routes by public transport: S-Bahn to Laim, then the bus to Schloss Nymphenburg, or U-Bahn to Rotkreuzplatz, then the tram to Schloss Nymphenburg. Both end at the palace crescent. By car there are about 450 free spaces and 8 coach bays, which on a summer Sunday is not always enough, and the tram is then the safer bet.

One note for planning the rest of the day: the Königlicher Hirschgarten, the largest beer garden in Europe with around 8,000 seats, lies about a kilometre southeast of the palace, roughly a quarter of an hour on foot and with an S-Bahn station of its own. Palace, park and beer garden combine into a single afternoon without changing trains.

From 1664 to today

Nymphenburg was not built in one go. It grew out of a single garden pavilion over more than two centuries, which explains its unusual shape: a central block with wings added again and again, and in front of it a crescent of pavilions that was meant to become a whole town.

1. 1662After ten years of marriage, the Bavarian electoral couple Ferdinand Maria and Henriette Adelaide of Savoy finally have an heir, Max Emanuel.
2. 1663Ferdinand Maria gives his wife the Kemnat estate west of the residence city; open fields, two hours from Munich at the time.
3. 1664Building starts to plans by Agostino Barelli, the architect of Munich’s Theatinerkirche. At first it is a single cubic pavilion.
4. c. 1679The first version of the “Lusthauß Nymphenburg” is essentially finished.
5. from 1701Max Emanuel adds two pavilions to the north and two to the south under Henrico Zuccalli, and has a canal dug to bring water from the Würm.
6. 1704–1715The War of the Spanish Succession forces Max Emanuel out of Bavaria and work stops for eleven years.
7. from 1715Joseph Effner and the Parisian garden architect Dominique Girard draw the master plan: the crescent, the circular wall, five pairs of pavilions.
8. 1731–1739François Cuvilliés the Elder builds the Amalienburg, the finest thing on the estate and a high point of European rococo.
9. 1745–1777Under Max III Joseph the great hall gets its present decoration, and the porcelain manufactory moves into the front crescent.
10. 1792Elector Karl Theodor opens the park to the public.
11. 1804–1823Friedrich Ludwig von Sckell reshapes the baroque garden into a landscape park. The canal, the cascade and the parterre stay.
12. 1825Max I Joseph, the first king of Bavaria, dies at Nymphenburg.
13. 1845Ludwig II is born here on 25 August.
14. 1865The neoclassical monopteros replaces two wooden predecessors by the Großer See.

Two entries in that list explain what you actually see. The War of the Spanish Succession interrupted construction for eleven years; when Max Emanuel returned from Paris in 1715 he brought French-trained artists with him, so the second phase looks nothing like the first. And the crescent was designed as the centre of a planned “Carlsstadt” that was never built, which is why it stands slightly adrift in the landscape today.

In short

Common questions

Prices, opening hours and restrictions as of August 2026, taken from the Bavarian Palace Department, the Bavarian Natural History Collections and the manufactory. Times and prices change; check the operator’s own page before you travel. Diese Seite auf Deutsch.