Explorer Füssen

St. Mang's Abbey was a Benedictine monastery founded in the 9th century where the hermit Magnus of Füssen is said to have died, later rebuilt as the Baroque complex beside the High Castle. Secularised in 1803, its south wing now houses the Füssen Town Museum, with Baroque ceremonial rooms and displays on the town's lute-making craft; the north wing serves as the town hall.

The High Castle rises above Füssen's old town, built from the 14th century for the Prince-Bishops of Augsburg and remodelled around 1500 under Bishop Friedrich II. Its courtyard walls carry trompe-l'oeil windows and gables. The north wing holds a Bavarian State Painting Collections branch gallery of late Gothic Swabian art; other wings serve as municipal offices.

Hohenschwangau Castle was built in the 1830s by Crown Prince Maximilian of Bavaria on the ruins of a medieval fortress, in a Neo-Gothic style evoking knightly legends. It was the childhood home of his son, King Ludwig II, who later built Neuschwanstein on the hilltop opposite. Its rooms, painted with medieval sagas, remain largely in their original 19th-century state.

Neuschwanstein Castle is a 19th-century Historicist palace built from 1869 for King Ludwig II of Bavaria on a hill above Hohenschwangau, near Füssen. Standing 65 metres tall, it can only be visited on a guided tour. Since 2025 it has formed part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site with three other palaces of Ludwig II.