About me, and why this site is about three tickets
I am Xaver Obermeier and I walk people round Munich for a living. I grew up two tram stops from Odeonsplatz and I still cut through the Hofgarten rather than walking round it, which is how I know that the gravel is quicker and that almost nobody realises the garden is free. This site exists because of a conversation I have at the Residenz roughly once a week, and it always starts the same way: somebody is holding the wrong ticket, or standing at the wrong door, or both.
The one thing to know before you arrive
The Munich Residenz is not one attraction. It is three separate ticketed places sharing one address: the Residenzmuseum, the Schatzkammer and the Cuvilliés-Theater. The palace administration prices them separately on its own tariff page — about ten euros each for the museum and the treasury, a few euros for the theatre, a pair ticket for the first two and one ticket for all three at about twenty.
And the parts do not keep the same hours. The museum and the treasury open every day of the year but five. The theatre does not: for most of the year it is shut on weekday mornings and opens at 2 pm, which the administration prints on its own opening-hours page. So people buy the combined ticket at half past nine, do the museum, walk round to the theatre at midday and find a locked door with their valid ticket in their hand. I have watched it happen. It is why the hours page leads with the theatre rather than burying it.
The doors are the other half of it. This block has more than one entrance and they are not interchangeable: the museum and treasury share one on the Residenzstraße and Max-Joseph-Platz side, the theatre has its own, and so does the Court Church of All Saints. Reviewers describe walking the whole building before finding the right one. That is on getting in, and it is the second most useful page here.
What the desk sells, and what I can help with
Admission is sold at the palace’s own desk, on the day, with no reservation.The palace sells its own tickets, at its own desk and through its own shop, and what the listings add is the part that needs a date — a guide with those tickets folded in, a private party, or an evening seat. Anyone under 18 is admitted free, as are older students carrying a valid card from a general or vocational school.
The audio guide comes with the ticket. The administration publishes it in nine languages for the museum and the treasury, at no charge, and it does not cover the theatre — which is the room where a live guide changes the visit most. If you have read somewhere that the handset costs money at this palace, that is a different Bavarian palace and a different policy. The cloakroom is free too, which matters because bags over a stated size are not allowed in and have to go somewhere.
And the Hofgarten is open to everyone. It is not inside any of the three tickets, and on a warm evening it is the best walk at this address — the natural end of a Residenz afternoon (the garden).
What people actually book here, and it surprised me
Music. Of the 908 ratings left on the eleven Residenz listings I carry, 658 were left after a concert — nearly three quarters. The Saturday hour in the old court chapel has 389 ratings on its own, against 190 for the guided visit that walks you through the entire building. Divide those and you get 2.05: the concert has been rated more than twice as often as the tour.
I did not expect that and I would not have guessed it. It changed what this site is about. You can hear this building as well as look at it, in the chapel, in the rococo theatre or in the Max-Joseph-Saal. So the concerts page is a pillar here rather than a footnote, and the reviews page opens with the arithmetic rather than with a testimonial.
Where the facts on this site come from
Prices, hours, closed days, the audio-guide languages, the bag rule and the photography rule come from the Bavarian Palace Administration, which runs the building. The administration’s own tariff and opening-hours pages are what this site follows.
Two things here are not the administration’s and are labelled every time they appear. The description of this place as the largest inner-city palace in Germany belongs to muenchen.de, the city’s own portal, and the room count of about 130 is repeated by the city and by guidebooks rather than published by the palace. The English history of the Crown of Princess Blanche is drawn from the published record rather than the palace administration Wikipedia, including the part where it probably belonged first to Anne of Bohemia, and the treasury page says so where it says it.
What a tour includes comes off its own listing page, read to the bottom rather than skimmed off the summary box, and quoted directly wherever the exact wording is doing the work.
Three choices behind this site
Ratings here belong to individual products — a guide’s two and a half hours, an evening of chamber music, a bus ticket — rather than to the palace itself.
The 113 written reviews on this site show each reviewer’s name.
The annual and 14-day passes cover a long list of Bavarian sights; check their current price before you buy.
Who pays for all this
You do, indirectly, and only if you book something. A tour or a concert booked from a link here pays me a small percentage out of the platform’s end, and your price is untouched by it. The whole arrangement is on the disclosure page.
Corrections are the messages I answer first. Hours move, listings get rewritten overnight, a room closes for restoration. Tell me and I will change the page.