Ludwig’s Schloss Linderhof, an ornate palace in…

Ludwig’s Schloss Linderhof, an ornate palace in neo-French Rococo style, with handsome formal gardens, is completed in 1878.

The grounds contain a Venus grotto lit by electricity, where Ludwig is rowed in a boat shaped like a shell.

After seeing the Bayreuth performances, Ludwig had built, in the forest near Linderhof, Hunding's Hut (Hundinghütte) (based on the stage set of the first act of Wagner's Die Walküre) complete with an artificial tree and a sword embedded in it.

In Die Walküre, Siegfried's father Siegmund, pulls the sword from the tree. (Hunding's Hut will be destroyed in 1945 but a replica will be constructed at Linderhof in 1990.

In 1877 a small hermitage (Einsiedlei des Gurnemanz) as in the third act of Wagner's Parsifal, had been erected near Hunding's Hut, with a meadow of spring flowers, where the king would retire to read. (A replica made in 2000 can now be seen in the park at Linderhof.)

Nearby, a Moroccan House, purchased at the Paris World Fair in 1878, is erected alongside the mountain road. (Sold in 1891 and taken to Oberammergau, it will be purchased by the government in 1980 and re-erected in the park at Linderhof after extensive restoration.)

Inside the palace, iconography reflects Ludwig's fascination with the absolutist government of Ancien Régime France.

Ludwig sees himself as the "Moon King", a romantic shadow of the earlier "Sun King", Louis XIV of France.

From Linderhof, Ludwig enjoys moonlit sleigh rides in an elaborate eighteenth-century sleigh, complete with footmen in eighteenth century livery.

Also in 1878, construction begins on his Versailles-derived Herrenchiemsee.