2005 marked the 60th anniversary of the liberation of most Nazi concentration camps in the closing months of the Second World War. All over an exhausted Europe, advancing Allied soldiers set free the desperate survivors of camp after camp. The diseased, the starving, the barely alive emerged to tell a shocked and disbelieving world of the full horror of a network of systematized murder, torture, degradation and exploitation that had first been conceived and set in motion 12 years earlier in 1933 in a sleepy little town about 18 km from Munich.

Of the many picturesque towns and villages that lie on the outskirts of Munich, one of the prettiest is the old medieval town of Dachau. Just outside the town center can today be found enduring testimony to the evil that was born among the rustic charm, where a Memorial Site stands on the grounds of the former concentration camp. This was the 'parent' camp. Dachau was the 'Academy of Terror', the originator, role-model and training ground for the vast order of brutality that spread over half of Europe in the wake of the armies of the Third Reich, and which ultimately culminated in history's greatest crime, the Final Solution.

While each camp was responsible for its own particular form of barbarism, what distinguished Dachau is that almost everything that happened in the system as a whole happened at some level there. Almost every category of victim passed through its infamous Arbeit macht frei (Freedom through Work) gate, German dissidents, outspoken clergymen, Jehovah's Witnesses, homosexuals, Jews, Polish civilians, all in all the citizens of some 34 nations. Today's Memorial Site combines the historical authenticity of the original environment and its many surviving buildings with the function of a modern exhibition center. It is a place of memory, of pilgrimage and of education.

Take a boat ride to the island of Herreninsel on Chiemsee, the largest Bavarian Lake. Here you will find another fantastic result of King Ludwig II's vivid imagination. The Royal Castle of Herrenchiemsee is a replica of the Palace of Versailles and was the biggest, most expensive and final castle of King Ludwig II.

After your tour of The Royal Castle of Herrenchiemsee, you will travel by boat to the island of Fraueninsel. This is one of the most beautiful places in Bavaria and boasts an ancient monastery at the center of the island. You will have time to visit the Benedictine monastery, and to stroll at leisure around the island.