Oberammergau, Germany: Beyond the Passion Play – Telegraph

Not a man to squander his talents, Markus, among other things, keeps bees and is a tour guide. The town’s main draw is the Passion Play theatre, custom-built to enable up to 800 people to take to the stage at the same time, and containing a great selection of photographs depicting Passion Plays past.

Other attractions include a classically Bavarian onion-domed church (St Peter and Paul) and, until January 2012, in the town’s museum, a special exhibition dedicated to Ludwig II, the Bavarian king famous for his fairy-tale castles (including the nearby Linderhof) and a man who visited Oberammergau several times.

The town is also famed for its many buildings with beautifully painted (and usually religious-themed) facades – a trompe l’oeil effect known as Lüftmalerei.

We were sitting opposite one of the best examples of Lüftmalerei – adorning the aptly named Pilate’s House – in the form of striking colourful depictions of illusory balconies, balustrades and columns, framing larger scenes of Christ standing before Pilate and then the Resurrection. Inside Pilate’s House, Markus showed me another of the village’s specialities: beautifully intricate figures carved out of wood, many produced in the workshops here (he has one himself).

One of Markus’s own creations consisted of a man and a woman dressed in formal evening gear attached to string which, when tugged, caused them to break into a dance; another was of a cello player who, similarly, performed to order. They were considerably more playful than the

Article source: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/europe/germany/8654779/Oberammergau-Germany-Beyond-the-Passion-Play.html