What the Munich Residenz charges, what it gives away, and what nobody sells you
The Bavarian Palace Administration publishes its own tariff for this address, and the tariff is the reason this site exists in the shape it does. There is no single Residenz ticket. There is a ticket for the Residence Museum, a ticket for the Treasury, a ticket for the Cuvilliés Theatre, a pair ticket for the first two and one ticket that covers all three. The prices sit in the table below, where they can be corrected when the operator changes them, and the shape of the thing is in the prose, where it will still be true next year.
The operator’s published tariff
Read off the Bavarian Palace Administration’s own admission page. If another source disagrees with this table, including the city’s own tourism portal, this table wins — the portal still prints an older figure for the museum and the Treasury, and the operator is the one taking the money.
| Ticket | Regular | Reduced |
|---|---|---|
| Residence Museum | €10 | €9 |
| Treasury (Schatzkammer) | €10 | €9 |
| Cuvilliés Theatre | €5 | €4 |
| Museum + Treasury | €15 | €13 |
| All three together | €20 | €16 |
| Court Garden (Hofgarten) | Free | Free |
Three tickets, one address, and more than one door. The museum and the Treasury share an entrance; the theatre has its own, and so does the Court Church of All Saints (which door, and what you may carry through it).
The two savings, with the sums written out
Both combined tickets save exactly five euros against buying their parts one by one. That is not a promotion and it is not a claim on this site’s part — it is subtraction, and here it is done in public so you can check it against the tariff above.
| Bought separately | Comes to | The combined ticket | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Museum + Treasury + Theatre | €10 + €10 + €5 = €25 | €20 | €5 |
| Museum + Treasury | €10 + €10 = €20 | €15 | €5 |
The saving on the all-three ticket is only a saving if you use all three, and this is where the money goes wrong at this address. The theatre keeps a timetable of its own. From Monday to Saturday, for most of the year, it does not open until 2 pm, while the museum and the Treasury have been open since morning. Buy the combined ticket at half past nine, spend three hours in the state rooms, walk round to the theatre door at one o’clock and you have paid for something that is shut (both timetables, season by season).
If your day at this address is a morning only, the pair ticket for the museum and the Treasury is the one that fits it, and it saves the same five euros as the bigger one. Take the all-three ticket when your visit runs past two in the afternoon, or on a Sunday or public holiday, or at any point between 1 August and 14 September, when the theatre opens in the morning like everything else. The theatre, and why its clock is different.
Who pays nothing, and what costs nothing
The operator’s wording is that children under 18 receive complimentary admission, and a student over 18 with a valid card from a general or vocational school is treated the same way. Note what that is not: not a family rate, and not the reduced column of the tariff. It is no ticket at all, at all three parts, which means a household of two adults and three children under 18 pays for two.
Three more things at this address cost nothing, and two of them are routinely paid for elsewhere:
- The audio guide. No charge, and nine languages on the operator’s list: German, English, French, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Chinese, Japanese and Arabic. Two of the three ticketed parts have one — the museum and the Treasury. The theatre has none, and anybody who tells you otherwise has not read the page it is written on.
- The cloakroom. Free and supervised, and you will be using it: nothing from 35 x 30 x 12 cm upwards goes in, and neither does a rucksack or anything bulky. The bag rule, and where the counter is.
- The Court Garden. No ticket, no gate charge, not part of any of the three admissions. Its fountain machinery runs from April to October, daily between 10 am and 2 pm. The garden, and what else in this city is free.
You may also take pictures, which is not true everywhere in this country and is worth knowing before you decide what a visit is worth to you. The operator permits photography and video for personal use, and rules out flash and tripods. Nothing to buy for it, nothing to declare at the desk.
The annual and 14-day passes, which this site cannot price
The Bavarian Palace Administration sells an annual pass and a 14-day pass covering, in its own words, over forty of the most beautiful sights in Bavaria. Both would apply here. Both are worth asking about at the counter if this palace is one stop of several in the state.
No price for either appears on the page I read, so no price for either appears on this site. I am not going to reconstruct one from a third-hand blog post and print it next to figures I took off the operator, because the two would look equally reliable sitting side by side and only one of them would be. Ask at the ticket counter, or on the administration’s own site, and treat any figure you find elsewhere the same way I am treating it.
Two more things about buying at the desk: no advance reservation is needed for any of the three tickets, and a group of more than 25 has to divide before it goes in. There is nothing to book ahead, which brings us to the part of this page most visitors arrive here looking for.
No tour platform sells you entry to this building
This is the plainest fact on the page and the one that surprises people. Of the sixteen listings in our catalogue for the Munich Residenz, not one is a plain admission ticket. Skip-the-line wording does appear on several listings, but always bundled with a guide — there is no product here that is only the queue-jump and the entry. The counter sells admission to anyone who walks up to it, with no reservation asked for.
What the platform sells instead is company. A licensed guide with the tickets folded into the price. A private version of the same for your party. A seat at an evening concert in one of the halls, which is bought as an evening and reaches no museum room at all. A bus ticket that stops nearby and covers admission to nothing. So the comparison a lot of readers arrive wanting to make — palace ticket against tour price — is not a comparison of two ways to do the same thing. One is the entry. The other is somebody explaining what you are looking at, on top of the entry.
Whether that is worth paying for depends entirely on the free handset. Nine languages, no charge, and it covers the two parts most people came for. If it does the job for you, the cheapest visit to this palace is also the ordinary one. If you would rather ask questions out loud, the guided listings are the answer, and one of them reaches all three parts.
The three that hand you a guide with the admission attached, and the most-reviewed evening sold at this address:
The guided oneMunich: Residenz Palace and Hofgarten Skip-the-Line Tour
Or the other palaceMunich: Nymphenburg Palace or Residenz Guided Tour
Most-reviewed thing hereMunich: Classical Concert at the Residenz Palace
Full comparison of all sixteen, grouped by what each one hands over: every listing at this address. And if it is the music you are after rather than the rooms, the five concerts and the halls they use.
Can’t make these dates?
Browse more available Munich Residenz tours and find one that fits your schedule — all with instant confirmation and free cancellation.
Before you go: the hours, and the 2 pm trap, which days everything here is shut, how long to allow, and how to reach Residenzstraße from the centre.
Frequently asked questions
How much does the Munich Residenz cost?
There is no single price, because there is no single ticket. The Residence Museum is about ten euros, the Treasury about ten, and the Cuvilliés Theatre about five. Take the museum and the Treasury together and it is about fifteen; take all three on one ticket and it is about twenty. Reduced rates apply to each. The exact figures, regular and reduced, are in the tariff table above, taken from the Bavarian Palace Administration’s own admission page.
Is the combination ticket worth it?
It saves five euros against buying the three tickets one by one, which is subtraction rather than an offer. Whether it is worth it depends on the clock: the Cuvilliés Theatre does not open until 2 pm from Monday to Saturday for most of the year, so a morning visit that ends at lunchtime pays for a third part it cannot use. On a morning-only visit the museum-and-Treasury pair ticket saves the same five euros and wastes nothing. Both timetables.
Do children pay to enter the Munich Residenz?
No. The operator’s wording is that children under 18 receive complimentary admission, and it applies at the museum, the Treasury and the theatre. Students over 18 holding a valid student card from a general or vocational school also enter free. Nor is there anything to pay for the audio guide, which is free in nine languages for the museum and the Treasury.
Is the audio guide at the Munich Residenz free, and what does it cover?
It is free, and the operator lists nine languages for it: German, English, French, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Chinese, Japanese and Arabic. Two of the three ticketed parts are covered, the museum and the Treasury; the Cuvilliés Theatre is not. For a lot of visitors that handset is the whole reason nothing else gets bought here. What is waiting at the door.
How much is the Bavarian palaces annual pass?
This site will not tell you, because the operator’s page I read does not publish a figure. The annual pass and the 14-day pass exist, both cover what the administration calls over forty of the most beautiful sights in Bavaria, and both would include this palace. Ask at the ticket counter. Any price you find on a third-party page has the same standing as a price I made up, and I am not printing one of those.
Do I need to book Munich Residenz tickets in advance?
No. The Bavarian Palace Administration asks for no advance reservation, and a group of more than 25 simply divides before going in. There is nothing to book in any case: not one of the sixteen listings on the platform for this address is a plain entry ticket. What people book ahead here is a guide or a concert seat. All sixteen, compared.