🇩🇪 Bayreuth | Where Baroque Art Meets Hidden Gems
A weekend trip to Bayreuth (about an hour by train from Nuremberg with many connections) is a must-do for anyone in the area. 🚂 🌟 Main Highlight: The Margravial Opera House (Markgräfliches Opernhaus)! This is one of the best-preserved Baroque opera houses in the world and a UNESCO World Heritage site. It’s absolutely breathtaking! Built in 1748, the entire opera house is a stunning example of Baroque opulence. Every detail of the stage, scenery, and ceiling reflects the luxurious tastes of the 18th-century nobility. It was custom-made by the Margravine for her love of music and art. It’s not just a building; it’s a testament to her passion for life and dedication to the arts. 🎭 The opera house offers a Chinese-language guidebook that provides detailed information on its decorations, boxes, ceiling paintings, and history. We bought a 9 euro student ticket (regular tickets are 10 euros, both available on-site), which didn’t include access to the upper-level boxes. (⚠️ No flash photography is allowed inside the opera house. 📸) You can also visit the Margravial Opera House Museum (the museum’s texts are bilingual in German and English, but all audio guides are only in German, which could be improved 😭). It focuses on the architecture and restoration process, with displays of costumes and scenery, and many multimedia interactions. They have animations about the history of music and the opera house (all in German). The museum holds every memory of the construction of this opera house: manuscripts from Wilhelmine, stage models, and multimedia reconstructions of 18th-century sound effects. It’s a quiet dialogue that brings you closer to the soul of history. 🎶 If you have the patience, I highly recommend visiting the museum. The interactive experience is top-notch, with great sound and projection effects. They also provide detailed and magnified displays and explanations of various parts of the church. The New Palace (Neues Schloss) is just a 10-minute walk from the opera house. Its Rococo-style hall and French garden are perfect for photos. 🌸 We didn’t go inside the palace, but the garden behind it is worth a visit, especially on a sunny day or in spring when the flowers are blooming. You can almost picture an elderly European couple sitting on a bench, basking in the sun and feeding ducks. There are many ducks (or other species I can’t identify—flying ducks) that walk in lines along the river. 🦆 #HistoryAndArt #WorldHeritage #GermanyTravel
