I came to Burghausen to visit the longest castle in Europe, I left feeling ready for Easter and thinking it’s one of the prettiest Old Towns in all of Bavaria!
Burghausen is located in Upper Bavaria, just over 110km from Munich. Despite that I had never heard of it until two days ago. Back in the day it was a key player in the salt trade. Today its #1 attraction is the longest castle in Europe – which is incidentally how I found out about Burghausen in the first place. But more on that in an upcoming post.
Normally you would find me huffing and puffing away on a mountain somewhere in the Alps. Cursing with each passing step, yet at the same time masochistically enjoying it. But the trade-off for all my hiking is that it leaves me with little time to explore all the non-hiking places around me. The only reason I’m not out hiking today is because of a knee injury of which the result is wearing a full leg brace 24/7 for six weeks.
I’m not going to lie, it sucks! But the unexpected upside is that it leads me to places that I wouldn’t normally explore – since I’d be too busy hiking. Ironically it always seems to occur around Easter. Two years ago I was recovering from knee surgery (the other knee) and itching to get out and do SOMETHING I discovered the Easter Egg Museum, the only one of its kind in Germany! I didn’t come to Burghausen expecting to find an Easter, but it was all around me.
As we drove into Burghausen, I noticed a shiny silver larger than life Easter Egg, then another one, then another. I counted four:
If that wasn’t enough to put the thought of Easter into my head, the pastel colored Old Town sure did. The entire medieval Old Town reminded me of a story book painted especially for Easter. Despite it being a cloudy, windy day, my spirits lifted as I took in the Renaissance, Baroque and Rococo facades and gabled roofs.
The Old Town of Burghausen is one of the nicest I’ve seen in all of Bavaria!
And believe me Bavarian villages know how to charm.
I loved how the bright yellow really showed the architectural lines of this building.