Palatial Digs in Bavaria up for Grabs
June 23, 2005
As you sift through the property pages of your local newspaper, you might find a bargain tucked away between the overpriced one-room apartments. The State of Bavaria is currently advertising some 170 prime properties it feels it no longer needs -- so if you happen to have a fortune at your fingertips, a hilltop mansion with dreaming spires and acres of land could now be yours.
But be warned -- bartering's out of the question. "This isn't about earning some quick cash," stressed Kurt Faltlhauser, Bavarian interior minister. "We're not just hawking any old thing."
Modern-day Mad King Ludwigs
Anyone with a taste for unusual real estate and ideas above their station might be tempted by the State Statistics Office, a former Jesuit monastery in a Munich pedestrian zone. The civil servants who have been pen-pushing there for the last few decades are set to move out, and no one is waiting to replace them. Given that it's also in urgent need of renovation, the State certainly doesn't want it, and since it's already had an offer that's in the three-figure millions, no one is dragging their feet over the deal.
Another potential bijou residence for buyers with more money than sense -- a little like the legendary Mad King of Ludwig of Bavaria who built many of the state's flashier palaces -- is a historic castle near Würzburg, a snip for a few million that comes complete with outhouses, a moat and several hectares of land.
Maybe the demure, classicist spa down the road in Bad Brückenau is more to your liking-- or perhaps you'd prefer the traditional Teutonic charms of a hotel on Lake Chiem.
Peddling Bavaria's best wares?
But before you start mortgaging your children to pay for your dream home, bear in mind you may run into a spot of bother with historical preservationists, who have complained that historically valuable buildings are simply being flogged off.
Faltlhauser isn't having any of it. All the owners will have to stick to certain rules, he says.
And before Walt Disney starts turning in his grave, the minister has promised that the state's real pieces de resistances certainly won't be changing hands in the foreseeable future. "We won't be putting Neuschwanstein on the market," he stressed.