Oberammergau, Germany: painted houses, woodcarvers and the village of the Passion Play

In 1633, as plague swept through Bavaria during the Thirty Years' War, the villagers of Oberammergau vowed that if they were spared they would perform a play of the Passion of Christ every ten years for ever. The deaths stopped, the first performance was staged in 1634, and the tradition has held ever since, drawing around half a million visitors when the play returns - most recently in 2022 and next in 2030. A village of about 5,000 people in the Bavarian Alps, Oberammergau sits on the Ammer river roughly 90 kilometres south-west of Munich and some 75 kilometres north of Innsbruck, across the Austrian border.

Even between the decennial performances the village is a feast for the eyes. Its houses are covered in Lüftlmalerei, the Bavarian art of painting whole facades with saints, fairy tales and trompe-l'oeil architecture, perfected here by Franz Seraph Zwinck in the eighteenth century; his masterpiece, the Pilatushaus, can still be seen.

A tradition carved in wood

Oberammergau has carved religious figures, nativity scenes and toys for centuries, a craft that carried the village through long Alpine winters and gave rise to the Bavarian State Woodcarving School. Dozens of workshops still line the streets, and the Oberammergau Museum displays both historic carvings and the story of the Passion Play in its purpose-built theatre.

A base in the Ammergau Alps

Ringed by mountains beneath the cone-shaped Kofel, the village serves as a fine base for the southern Bavarian Alps. The Benedictine abbey of Ettal lies just down the valley, Ludwig II's fairy-tale palace of Linderhof is close by, and walking and skiing trails climb straight from the edge of town into the Ammergau range.