2 Best Sights in Franconia and the German Danube, Germany

The interior of this high temple of the Wagner cult—where performances take place only during the annual Wagner Festival—is surprisingly plain. The spartan look, including wooden seats with no upholstering and relatively unadorned walls, is explained partly by Wagner's desire to achieve perfect acoustics, while the enormous stage is necessary to hold the huge casts required for Wagner's largest operas. The theater is only accessible during festival performances or by guided tour—at 2 pm daily except during festival season, with additional tour times at weekends and throughout spring and autumn; however, the only English-language tours are at 1 pm Saturday from April through October. To attend the festival performances, you'll need to register and apply for tickets in the December prior to the festival. You can explore the memorial park and gardens for free at any time.

In 1745 Margravine Wilhelmine commissioned the Italian architects Giuseppe and Carlo Bibiena to build this rococo jewel, sumptuously decorated in gold and blue, with Apollo and the nine Muses cavorting across the baroque frescoed ceiling. It was this delicate 500-seat theater that originally drew Wagner to Bayreuth; he felt that it might prove a suitable setting for his own operas, before realizing the limitations of its size, so he built the Festspielhaus instead. Ultimately, it has become a wonderful setting for the concerts and operas of Bayreuth's "other" musical festivals, which the theater hosts throughout the year. English-language tours take place daily at 12:30 pm (German at 3 pm)