Travel Tip: Nymphenburg Castle & Botanical Garden | Munich

I've been in Munich for more than eight months now – and it's about time to take a look at the surroundings. Most of the time you discover the world, but what's right in front of your door is often overlooked. That's why I plan to explore something in Munich or at least in the vicinity on a regular basis and then report about it here. My first stop: Nymphenburg Palace and the botanical garden!

Nymphenburg Castle

First of all, I had to refresh my knowledge a bit on Wikipedia: Nymphenburg Palace is apparently one of the largest European castles and is located in the Nymphenburg district of Munich. What impressed me the most, though, was that the palace is wider than Versailles, over 630 meters in total. And this is what you see when you walk from the parking lot towards the castle! It's a really beautiful sight, especially in the sunshine. I haven't been to the castle itself yet, so I can't say much about whether it's worth a visit. I will definitely do that again sometime! But the park is also really great, especially if you feel like a long walk but don't necessarily want to go to the English Garden (:

All information about opening hours and prices can be found here.

Munich Botanical Garden

The botanical garden in Munich is located in the park of Nymphenburg castle. The old botanical garden is still there (directly at the Stachus), but about 100 years ago the main part moved, because the air in the city became too bad. Meanwhile you can visit the botanical garden in Munich on 21 hectares about 16.000 species of plants – and that's exactly what I wanted to see last weekend.

For me it was the very first visit to a botanical garden, at least the first one I consciously decided for. I didn't have a specific goal, actually I got the idea mainly because I had heard about the "Big Stinker" on the radio. This is a rather large plant, which blooms only very rarely and at Pentecost it was so far – the news was of course on the radio. And somehow I wanted to go to the botanical garden after that, although I was of course way too late to see the plant in bloom again.

So I had no fixed destination in the botanical garden. But in the greenhouse I was mainly interested in cacti – the only plants that survive in the long term with me. I love huge cacti, and somehow I just loved to be in the greenhouse. I found everything that has to do with water plants rather boring, but everyone has a different taste. But all in all I found it quite impressive to see so many plants you normally don't find in Germany.

Besides, it was nice to be out and about with the camera again. Plants are a great subject to experiment a bit with depth of field – and that's exactly what I did for the whole afternoon.

I thought it was very cool that you had different subjects in the greenhouse – probably has to be that way since plants all need different climates. However, the different temperatures and humidities were not what fascinated me, but that I could imagine exactly what it was like plant-wise in that particular country. I did particularly well with Mexico, by the way – and that's exactly what's now relatively high on my travel bucket list. I was not aware before that a greenhouse can cause wanderlust!

 

Is it worth it?

Nymphenburg Palace and Munich Botanical Garden are great if you want to spend a morning or afternoon in nature, but don't really want to get out of the city. Because you don't really notice that you're still in the middle of Munich here! Certainly Nymphenburg Castle is not an alternative to Neuschwanstein (that's also still on the bucket list!), but if you don't want to go that far, it's perfect. So: yes, it is definitely worth it!