St. Bartholomä: 35 minutes by boat, €23.40 return
Pilgrimage church, former hunting lodge and national park information centre on a peninsula with no road access.
On the Hirschau peninsula on the western shore of Lake Königssee stands the pilgrimage church of St. Bartholomä (St. Bartholomew's) with its wine-red onion domes, and above it the East Face of the Watzmann. You can reach it only across the water, or on foot over mountain trails that take several hours. The boats of the Bayerische Seenschifffahrt take about 35 minutes from Seelände; a return ticket costs €23.40 for adults, one way €11.70.
Next to the church are the former royal hunting lodge, now a restaurant with a beer garden, and the national park information centre. The centre has two buildings: in the Jägerhaus, the main exhibition "Wasser versetzt Berge" (Water Moves Mountains) leads through five themed rooms on snow and glaciers, karst and springs; in the Holzstube, a twelve-minute nature film runs from May to October. Entry is free, and the exhibition is open and staffed all year, low-barrier and wheelchair-accessible, in German and English.
The most important planning rule is in the boat service's small print: keep an eye on the last boat. There is nowhere to stay overnight at St. Bartholomä, and camping is prohibited under the national park regulations. If you miss the last scheduled boat, the Wasserwacht Berchtesgaden (water rescue service) picks you up, which can cost up to €520. You buy the ticket for the return trip from the pier attendant; there is no online ticket for a one-way return trip.
St. Bartholomä lies deep inside the protected area: a point-in-polygon check against the OpenStreetMap boundary places the church, landing stage, information centre and restaurant all inside the national park, about four kilometres from the nearest boundary. Seelände, where the boats leave, lies 450 m outside it, so the trip takes you from the edge of the park into its heart.
Königssee boat service (Schifffahrt Königssee): fares ↗
In numbers
- Return, adults
- €23.40
- One way
- €11.70
- Crossing time one way
- about 35 minutes
- Distance from Seelände
- 4.9 km (3 mi) as the crow flies
- Information centre entry
- free
- Film in the Holzstube
- 12 minutes
- Watzmann
- 2,713 m (8,901 ft)
- Climb to the Kärlingerhaus
- about 5 hours, 1,000 m (3,281 ft) of ascent
- Cost if you miss the boat
- up to €520
- No boats
- on 24 December
