The palace was commissioned by the electoral couple Ferdinand Maria and Henriette Adelaide of Savoy to the designs of the Italian architect Agostino Barelli in 1664 after the birth of their son Maximilian II Emanuel.

[1] It then quickly replaced the nearby Blutenburg Castle as major hunting lodge of the court and competed to Schleissheim Palace.

Starting in 1701, Maximilian Emanuel, the heir to Bavaria, a sovereign electorate of the Holy Roman Empire, undertook a systematic extension of the palace.

His son Prince-Elector Maximilian III founded the Nymphenburg Porcelain Manufactory in 1747, to this day housed in one of these cavalier's lodges.

Its fashionable Rococo products by porcelain sculptors Franz Anton Bustelli and Dominik Auliczek made the name Nymphenburg widely known.

In 1826, under King Ludwig I of Bavaria, his architect Leo von Klenze removed the gables of the main pavilion with the Electoral coat of arms and created an attic style decoration directly under the roof instead.

Charles Albert lived during his time in Munich as Holy Roman Emperor at Nymphenburg Palace and died there in 1745.

[4] In 1863, the only meeting between Ludwig and Otto von Bismarck was held in Nymphenburg, although they remained connected in a lifelong friendship.

Today, Nymphenburg is open to the public but also continues to be a home and chancery for the head of the House of Wittelsbach, currently Franz, Duke of Bavaria.

North of the Stone Hall, there is the wood-panelled antechamber, the audience chamber decorated with Brussels tapestries and the former bedroom with the so-called Little Beauty Gallery with the ladies of Versailles, all rooms were remodelled under Maximilian II Emanuel in the style of the Régence but retain their original Baroque ceilings.

The former small dining room of the Inner Southern Pavilion today houses the famous attraction Gallery of Beauties of King Ludwig I of Bavaria.

On behalf of the king the court painter Joseph Karl Stieler has portrayed 36 beautiful women from all social classes of Munich, the best known of these are the shoemaker's daughter Helene Sedlmayr and Ludwig's infamous mistress Lola Montez.

In the former royal stables in the South Wing is the Marstallmuseum (carriage museum), with one of the greatest coach collections in Europe.

The Outer Northern Pavilion houses the chapel, whose ceiling painting by Joseph Adam von Mölk deals with the life of St Mary Magdalene.

Further north is the third pavilion, the Gardemeublebau from 1723, an elongated building which served during the period of its origin for the Cue sports and the Jeu de Passe, a ball game inspired by Pall-mall, which was invented by Max Emanuel himself and was played indoors and outdoors.

[5] The 200-hectare (490-acre) park, once an Italian garden (1671), which was enlarged and rearranged in French style by Dominique Girard, a pupil of Le Notre, was finally redone in the English manner during the early 19th century by Friedrich Ludwig von Sckell, on behalf of prince-elector Charles Theodore.

The park is bisected by the long western canal along the principal axis which leads from the palace to the marble cascade (decorated with stone figures of Greek and Roman gods) in the west.

Many were the work of Dominik Auliczek and Roman Anton Boos, who later added twelve decorative marble vases with mythological themes.

The fountains in front of the palace and in the garden parterre continue to be operated by the water powered Pumping Stations built between 1803 and 1808.

The "Salettl" (1799), a cottage with its little garden nearby close to the former menagerie served as attraction for the children of Maximilian IV Joseph.

The driveway ("Auffahrtsallee") from the city on both sides of the eastern canal is framed by a semicircle of smaller baroque buildings ("Kavalierhäuser") at the Cour d'honneur.

So the Wittelsbach Falkenlust Palace was built in the style of the Amalienburg while the Pagodenburg served as prototype for the building of the same name in Rastatt.

These shows in the park comprised 2000 players with international stars, bare-breasted girls and included also members of the SS Cavalry under Hermann Fegelein.

[citation needed] The palace and its park were some of the main filming locations of Alain Resnais's 1961 movie Last Year at Marienbad.