The name of the house is made understandable by the saying engraved on its front:
"Here where my imagination found peace - Wahnfried - let this house be named by me."
- Richard Wagner
According to a diary entry by Cosima Wagner from May 4, 1874, the Hessian town of Wanfried near Eschwege was the inspiration for the name of the house: [1]
“... in Hesse there would be a place Wahnfried, it had touched him (Wagner) so mystically, this combination of the two words, and like the poem by Goethe, what was only spoken to the wise, only the sensible would suspect what we understand by."
- Cosima Wagner in The Diaries
After Wagner couldn't find a suitable house in Bayreuth, he chose a meadow plot on Rennweg (today Richard-Wagner-Straße) directly on the Hofgarten as a building site for his future home. On January 6, 1872, the royal court secretary Lorenz von Düfflipp informed Wagner that the king had authorized him to gradually pay Wagner up to 25,000 thalers to help him purchase land and build houses. Wagner acquired the building site on February 1, 1872 for 12,000 guilders. [
Source: Wikipedia