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Linderhof Palace () is a schloss in Germany, in southwest Bavaria near the village of Ettal. It is the smallest of the three palaces built by King Ludwig II of Bavaria and the only one which was actually completed and that he lived in most of the time from 1876 onward.
In 2025, the palace was designated as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.
Stylistically, however, the building and its decor take their cues from the mid-18th century Rococo of Louis XV, and the small palace in the Graswang valley was more directly based on that king's Petit Trianon on the Versailles grounds. The symbol of the sun that can be found everywhere in the decoration of the rooms represents the French notion of absolutism that, for Ludwig, was the perfect incorporation of his ideal of a God-given monarchy with total royal power. Such a monarchy could no longer be realised in Europe in the second half of the nineteenth century. In the Kingdom of Bavaria, the monarch was constitutionally severely restricted, quite apart from Ludwig's incompetence and disinterest in really taking care of state affairs and political power struggles. Especially the bedroom was important to the ceremonial life of an absolute monarch; Louis XIV of France used to give his first (lever) and last audience (coucher) of the day in his bedchamber. In imitation of Versailles, the bedroom is the largest chamber of Linderhof Palace. By facing north, however, the Linderhof bedroom inverts the symbolism of its Versailles counterpart, showing Ludwig's self-image as a "Night-King", because he had gotten into the habit of turning night into day and vice versa. The reclusive monarch naturally never intended to live surrounded by thousands of people in a vast palace, rising and going to bed in the presence of dozens of dignitaries like the Sun King. Yet he revered the latter (and envied his unlimited power), which is why allusions to him can be found in numerous other details. For example, the ceiling of the dining room depicts scenes from life at the court of Versailles, and the horseshoe-shaped cabinets are decorated with portraits of French courtiers and noblemen (including Madame de Pompadour, the mistress of Louis XV).
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The middle table has a top with lapis-lazuli, amethyst and chalcedony inlay work and shows the Bavarian coat of arms in glass mosaic.
A carpet made of ostrich plumes.
An Indian ivory candelabra in the alcove with 16 branches.
Two mantelpieces clad with lapis-lazuli and decorated with gilded bronze ornaments.
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Two round tables with malachite tops, gift of Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna of Russia to King Ludwig II.
Throne baldachin with ostrich feather bunches (as an oriental symbol of royal power).
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Meissen porcelain centrepiece with china flowers.
The position of the bed itself on steps in the alcove that is closed off by a gilded balustrade, like the baroque Munich model, gives it the appearance of an altar and thereby glorifies Ludwig II as he slept during the day. He often also spent the night waking and reading in this room, which was illuminated by numerous candles, among other a glass candelabra with 108 candles. The king was very well read about the legends and mythologies of the Middle Ages as well as about court life and the arts in the era of Louis XIV.
The two console tables are of Meissen porcelain (which was the king's favorite china). This room was completely rebuilt in 1884 and could not be totally finished until the king's death two years later.
The northern part is characterized by a cascade of thirty marble steps. The bottom end of the cascade is formed by the Poseidon fountain and at the top there is a Music Pavilion.
The centre of the western parterre is formed by basin with the gilt figure of "Pheme". In the west there is a pavilion with the bust of Louis XIV. In front of it you see a fountain with the gilt sculpture "Cupid with dolphins". The garden is decorated with four majolica vases.
The crowning of the eastern parterre is a wooden pavilion containing the bust of Louis XVI. Twenty-four steps below it there is a fountain basin with a gilt sculpture "Amor shooting an arrow". A sculpture of "Venus and Adonis" is placed between the basin and the palace.
The water parterre in front of the palace is dominated by a large basin with the gilt fountain group "Flora and ". The fountain's water jet itself is nearly 25 meters high.
The terrace gardens form the southern part of the park and correspond to the cascade in the north. On the landing of the first flight there is the "Naiad fountain" consisting of three basins and the sculptures of water nymphs. In the middle arch of the niche you see the bust of Marie Antoinette of France. These gardens are crowned by a round temple with a statue of Venus formed after a painting by Antoine Watteau (The Embarkation for Cythera).
The grotto was built under the direction of the opera set designer August Dirigl between 1875 and 1877. It is an iron construction whose partition walls were covered with impregnated canvas, which in turn was sprayed with a cement mixture from which the artificially created stalactites are made. The grotto is divided into two side grottos and a main grotto. In artificial caves in the "rock walls" there are two seats from which the king could follow musical performances: the gold plated "shell throne" and a "crystal throne" on the "Lorelei Rock", from which one gazes into a mirror in which the dream world continues indefinitely. Depending on the lighting, the king could thus immerse himself in the respective scenes of the opera. The crystal prisms surrounding the seat had been illuminated from below with electric light bulbs since their manufacture in 1877, so that their prism-like glow reflected rainbow colors on the walls. The holders for the series-connected batteries have been preserved to this day. This is all the more remarkable because the patent for light bulbs was not granted until years later, in 1880. Die Venusgrotte – Eine Touristische Attraktion, vr-dynamix.com Die Restaurierung des Kristallthrons auf dem Loreleyfelsen in der Grotte zu Linderhof (blog: The restoration of the crystal throne on the Loreley rock in the grotto at Linderhof), July 2025, schloesserblog.bayern.de by the Bavarian Administration of State-Owned Palaces, Gardens and Lakes
Seven stoves were needed to heat the damp and cool rooms several days in advance, even in summer. A waterfall and a shell-shaped barge were custom-made for use in the grotto. A rainbow projection device and a wave machine completed the illusion as the king was rowed around on the artificial lake while musicians played motifs from Tannhäuser. At the same time he wanted his own blue grotto of Capri. Therefore, 24 dynamo generators powered by a steam engine, had been installed by Johann Sigmund Schuckert in 1878 and so already in the time of Ludwig II it was possible to illuminate the grotto with in changing colours. This is said to have not only been the first Bavarian electricity plant but the first permanently installed power plant in the world.Siemens AG: Siemens recalls pioneers of the first age of electricity at Linderhof Palace (PDF) The king's desire for a “bluer blu” spurred the then young paint industry and, four years after Ludwig's death, the Baden Aniline and Soda Factory (BASF) received a patent from the Imperial Patent Office for the production of artificial indigo dye. The power plant, the light bulbs with batteries, the projection devices and the artificial blue represented technical innovations of unprecedented novelty, no opera house at that time could boast anything comparable. Indeed, the requirements and orders that the king set for the furnishing of his grotto led to remarkable technological advances. He wasn't interested in the technologies used; he wanted to achieve specific, precise effects – and it was up to engineers to invent them for him.
These installations are somewhat reminiscent of Ludwig's bedroom at Hohenschwangau Castle, into which he had a group of artificial rocks built in 1864, over which a waterfall flowed, as well as an apparatus for producing an artificial rainbow and a night sky with the moon and stars, illuminated by a complicated system of mirrors from the upper floor. The creation of perfect illusions through the use of cutting-edge technologies actually makes the “fairytale king” appear more in tune with modernity and more open to the achievements of the Industrial Revolution than his backward-looking image would suggest.
The grotto was entirely renovated from 2024 until 2025, as the moisture-sensitive construction on a mountain slope was significantly damaged by rain and meltwater.. The entire restoration process involved around 500,000 working hours and 58.9 million euros. Press release from the Bavarian state government, 30 April 2025
In 1884 the hut burned down, but was immediately rebuilt. In 1945 it fell victim to the flames again due to arson, although some of the furniture and furnishings were preserved. In the summer of 1990, Hunding's Hut was rebuilt at a new location closer to the palace. A reconstruction at the original location could not be carried out for reasons of nature conservation.
Ludwig used to celebrate Germanic feasts in Hunding's Hut. In his 1972 Ludwig film epic, the director Luchino Visconti shot naked or half-clothed farm boys hanging lazily on the branches in the hut (in a film studio in Rome). The censors cut these and other scenes from the first version.Alexander García Düttmann, Visconti: Einsichten in Fleisch und Blut, Kadmos, 2006, p. 75. See also: Censorship and alternate versions of Visconti's Ludwig film.
Aside from his magnificent palaces, the king owned a number of modest Alpine huts. He visited these regularly in a fixed annual cycle in spring and autumn. The most famous is the King's House on Schachen, where he spent his birthday every August. Good Fridays he used to spend in the Ammergau Alps forest contemplating. For this purpose, he had Gurnemanz' Hermitage, an imaginary hermit's hut built in a forest clearing there in 1877. In order to reflect the uplifting mood of the third act, the king really wanted to have a flower meadow around the hut on Good Friday. If there was no such meadow because there was still snow lying, the garden director had to plant one for the king. He reported about the hermitage to Wagner in a letter and wrote: "There on the consecrated site I can already hear the silver trumpets from the Grail's Castle..." The original hermitage with its bell tower fell into disrepair in the 1960s. In 1999/2000, private donations made it possible to reconstruct the Gurnemanz hermitage for Linderhof. The replica was placed only about 150 meters west of the new Hunding's Hut.
These three structures, the "Venus Grotto", "Hunding's Hut" and "Gurnemanz Hermitage" remind us another time of the operas of Richard Wagner. But besides that and the baroque architecture Ludwig was also interested in the oriental world.
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