Bavaria

Bavaria is Germany‘s largest state by area, in the country’s southeast, bordering Austria and the Czech Republic. Munich is the capital. The land covers Alpine peaks in the south, the Danube valley in the middle, and the Franconian hills in the north, with a Catholic Baroque tradition visible in pilgrimage churches, abbeys, and the castles of King Ludwig II.

Munich

Marienplatz has been the centre of Munich since 1158. It started as Schrannenplatz, the grain market, and was renamed for the Mariensäule with the Virgin Mary as patron saint of Bavaria. The New Town Hall faces the square; the column with Mary on top sits in the middle. In December the Christkindlmarkt fills the space with wooden stalls, Glühwein steam, and a level of crowd you accept or avoid.

A thorough walk through the old centre takes a full day. Most of the headline sights cluster within a 20 minute walk of Marienplatz, and the restaurants around it are where Bavarian cooking is most consistently itself: Weisswurst with sweet mustard, Schweinebraten, pretzels the size of a face.

Bavarian State Opera

Through the Residenz quarter sits Max-Joseph-Platz, with the Bavarian State Opera on its eastern side. The Max Joseph monument in the centre of the square was sculpted by Christian Daniel Rauch between 1826 and 1835 to honour the king who gave Bavaria its first constitution.

I shot the opera house in the quiet hour before sunrise, the moon still up, the cobblestones cold. Munich at that hour is the version of itself that the daytime crowds never see. Berlin, by contrast, never really sleeps in the same way. The two cities sit on opposite ends of the German temperament: one tense and modern, the other ceremonial and slow.

Justizpalast

The Justizpalast at the western edge of the Altstadt was built between 1890 and 1897 in neo-Baroque style, all sandstone and dome. It became known internationally for the 1943 trial of Hans and Sophie Scholl of the White Rose, the student resistance group sentenced to death in Room 243.

The building has a more personal meaning for me as well. It houses District Court I of Munich, one of the courts where I have argued copyright cases against companies that used my photographs without licence. Some of the judges there have been thoughtful about photographers’ rights, which is not a given in Germany. I shot the facade on a sunny morning, almost as a kind of acknowledgement.

Neuschwanstein Castle

Neuschwanstein sits above the village of Hohenschwangau in the Allgäu Alps, about two hours south of Munich by car. King Ludwig II commissioned it in 1869, three years after Bavaria lost its independence to Prussia. He wrote to Richard Wagner, whose music he was funding, that he wanted to rebuild the ruins of Hohenschwangau in the style of the old German knightly buildings. He drew comparisons between himself and Parsifal.

History gave Ludwig two nicknames: the Mad King, or the Märchenkönig. He died in 1886 under unresolved circumstances in Lake Starnberg. Neuschwanstein Castle opened to the public a few weeks later.

The castle now receives roughly 6,000 visitors a day. Most arrive by tour bus in the late morning, so the path up in the early hours is calmer than the numbers suggest. Walt Disney drew on the silhouette for Cinderella’s castle, which is why the place feels familiar before you see it.

When we walked back to the car at the base of the foothills, I looked up one more time and noticed a tiny figure in the sky above the towers, a paraglider catching a thermal off the Tegelberg. It was the kind of detail that took a second look to see.

When you do visit the famous Neuschwanstein Castle, make sure you also explore the charming surrounding villages such as Schwangau.

Wieskirche

The Wieskirche, the Pilgrimage Church of Wies, stands in a meadow at the foot of the Alps with no town around it. That is part of why it is unforgettable on arrival. You drive between fields, see a white church with a green roof in the distance, and pull over.

The story behind the church is local. On 14 June 1738, a villager named Maria Lori reported that a wooden statue of the scourged Christ was shedding tears. Pilgrims from Germany, Austria, Bohemia, and Italy began arriving in numbers the village could not absorb, and the local convent decided to build a shrine. The commission went to Dominikus Zimmermann in 1745, and the church was completed in 1754. UNESCO inscribed it in 1983.

We arrived under a cloudy sky. The light shifted while we were still scouting the exterior, and by the time we framed the church against the Alps, the conditions were close to ideal.

The interior is built around an oval plan and decorated by the 18th-century Wessobrunner School in full Rococo: gold, painted clouds, sculptural figures, painted columns. The colours are louder than anything you would expect from a German village church.

The most curious detail is the ceiling. It looks like a dome from below, but it is flat. The fresco was painted in perspective to give the impression of curvature, and the optical illusion is good enough that even in the photograph it is hard to see. The original goal of the artists, by their own description, was to render the divine in visible form. Whether that landed depends on the viewer. The craft, at least, is unambiguous.

Tripods are not allowed inside, which is standard for historic monuments. A wide-angle lens handheld, with a body that handles low light cleanly, is the practical setup.

Walhalla Memorial

The Walhalla Memorial sits on a hill above the Danube near Regensburg. King Ludwig I of Bavaria commissioned it as a hall of fame for outstanding figures from the German-speaking world, and architect Leo von Klenze modelled it on the Parthenon. The first impression on the climb up is of arriving in Greece rather than Germany. The name comes from Valhalla, the legendary hall of fallen warriors in Germanic mythology.

We made the detour on the road from Regensburg to Passau and climbed the 358 marble steps. The temple is more massive in person than the photographs suggest. Including a person in the frame is one of the few ways to give a sense of scale, though I usually try to keep figures out.

From the marble terrace at the top, the Danube valley opens up below: the river, fields, clusters of trees, distant villages. Under the right light the river reflects the sky like glass.

I shot the view through the columns themselves, which break the panorama into segments. Up close, the columns have the proportions of classical Greek work but the surface is brutal: weathered, scarred, almost industrial. The contrast between delicate form and brutal time is the thing I find interesting about the place.

A white line is painted on the terrace floor, with “Do not cross” written in several languages. Someone did cross, in 2025, and died from the fall of about ten metres. New fences have since been installed. I cannot speak to what the view looks like with the additional barriers; the Walhalla I photographed was unfenced.

The interior is one long neoclassical chamber with more than one hundred marble busts and dozens of plaques. Goethe, Beethoven, Brahms, Bach, Strauss, Einstein, and Copernicus are all here. The collection is not limited to figures from modern Germany; many are from Austria, Switzerland, and the wider German-speaking world. Copernicus, born in Polish Royal Prussia, is included on the basis that he wrote in Latin and German and worked under the Teutonic Order, which prompted a long Polish-German debate between Daria and me on the way down the steps.

The combination of sober marble tones with the gold and blue ceiling and the symmetrical floor is the strongest visual element of the chamber. A wide shot is the only way to fit the contrast in one frame.

The exterior and the view are free. Entering the hall of busts costs a small fee. It is worth doing if German history matters to you. Despite growing up in Germany, I had not heard of the Walhalla before researching this trip, and not in school either. For reasons rooted in the last ninety years, German history is not something Germans are taught to celebrate.

Banz Abbey

Kloster Banz, also called Banz Castle, sits on a hill above the Main valley near Bad Staffelstein in Upper Franconia. The site began as a Benedictine monastery in the 11th century and was later rebuilt in Baroque style. Today it serves as a conference centre and houses a small museum of fossils and curiosities, including Egyptian mummies.

Locals tipped us off about the place while we were staying in Bad Staffelstein, and we drove up hoping for a sunset the weather refused to deliver. The compensation, on the way in, was the smell of sauerkraut and Bavarian beer from the restaurant at the entrance. While I went to study the menu, the courtyard got photographed without me.

Ingolstadt

Ingolstadt sits on the Danube in Upper Bavaria, between Munich and Nuremberg. It is one of the oldest towns in the state, first mentioned in a document of Charlemagne in 806, and granted town status in 1250. The Old Town Hall in the centre dates back to roughly the 14th century. The historic centre suffered bomb damage in the Second World War and was rebuilt fairly quickly.

Modern Ingolstadt is a quiet economic heavyweight. Audi is headquartered here, two oil refineries operate on the outskirts, and the original head offices of MediaMarkt and Saturn are also in the city. The result is a town centre that feels disproportionately well kept for its size: clean buildings, traditional Bavarian restaurants, and good cafes around the Rathausplatz. We spent an afternoon there on the way to Italy and left with positive memories.

When to Visit Bavaria

Late spring (May to early June) and early autumn (September to early October) give the best balance of mild weather and manageable crowds. July and August bring the highest visitor numbers, particularly at Neuschwanstein and the Wieskirche. Late September overlaps with Oktoberfest in Munich, worth knowing whether you want to attend or avoid it. December turns Marienplatz and Nuremberg into Christmas market towns, with short days and grey light that suit interiors more than landscapes. January and February work for snow on the Alps around Schwangau, with the trade-off of limited castle access on some routes.

Food and Drink in Bavaria

Bavarian cooking is heavy, regional, and distinctly different from the rest of German cuisine. Weisswurst with sweet mustard and a pretzel is the classical Munich breakfast and is traditionally not eaten after noon. Schweinsbraten with potato dumplings, Schweinshaxe (roast pork knuckle), Leberkäse, Obatzda, and Apfelstrudel make up most of the standard menus.

On drinks, the Munich beer-garden tradition runs through Helles, Weissbier, Dunkles, and Bock. In Franconia the style shifts; around Bamberg the local specialty is Rauchbier, a smoked beer with a flavour closer to ham than to standard lager. Wine grows in lower Franconia around Würzburg, sold in the distinctive flat round bottles called Bocksbeutel.

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