The palace he ordered destroyed and slept in for ten days

Here's the Herrenchiemsee story that gets me every time. King Ludwig II of Bavaria decided he wanted his own private Versailles, so he built one, on an island in the middle of the Chiemsee, spending more money on it than his two far more famous castles put together.

He barely got to enjoy it. Ludwig stayed there for around ten days in total before he was found dead in a lake near Munich under circumstances that have never been fully explained, and only twenty of the seventy rooms he'd planned were ever finished. He'd apparently left instructions that the whole palace should be destroyed once he was gone. Thankfully, nobody followed through, and instead of being torn down it was opened to the public, half-built extravagance, unfinished wings and all, exactly as he left it.

I painted the palace in watercolour and ink, that grand facade catching the lake light. There's a poster with a letter home and a postcard if you'd like one.

Shop the poster here: Herrenchiemsee Palace, Bavaria · Travel Poster