Munich

Henry the Lion, Duke of Saxony and Bavaria, founded Munich around 1158 to control the salt trade, burning the bridge at Föhring and building his own toll bridge over the Isar; 14 June 1158 is counted as the founding day, and the name comes from a small monastic settlement, zu den Munchen, "to the monks". It received city status in 1175 and passed to the Wittelsbachs, who ruled it until 1918; Duke Louis IV, born in Munich, became Holy Roman Emperor in 1328. The Frauenkirche rose in the 15th century, and in 1506 Munich became capital of a reunited Bavaria.

The city became a stronghold of the Counter-Reformation — the "German Rome" — and the Hofbräuhaus was founded in 1589. It became an electoral residence in 1623 and, in 1806, capital of the Kingdom of Bavaria. In October 1810 a festival for the crown prince's wedding grew into the Oktoberfest, and Ludwig I's neoclassical museums and avenues earned the city the name "Athens on the Isar". Der Blaue Reiter was founded here in 1911.

After the 1918 revolution and the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic, Munich became the birthplace of the Nazi movement: Hitler's Beer Hall Putsch failed in 1923, and the city was later called the "Capital of the Movement". The first concentration camp opened at nearby Dachau in 1933, the Munich Agreement was signed here in 1938, and the White Rose student resistance was based at the university. Around half the city was heavily damaged in 71 air raids, and US troops entered on 30 April 1945. Rebuilt on its pre-war street plan, Munich passed a million people in 1957. It hosted the 1972 Olympics, overshadowed by the murder of 11 Israeli athletes taken hostage in the Olympic village, and the 1974 World Cup final.

Few German cities have such a weight of art and music. The Pinakotheken, the Glyptothek and the Lenbachhaus fill the Kunstareal; the National Theatre is home to the Bavarian State Opera, where Wagner's Die Meistersinger had its premiere under Ludwig II's patronage; and the city has three orchestras of international standing. Orlando di Lasso, Mozart, Wagner and Richard Strauss all worked here. Schwabing was the bohemian heart of German letters around 1900, from Thomas Mann to the satirical magazine Simplicissimus, and the city later became a centre of the New German Cinema and of the 1970s disco and rock recorded at Musicland Studios.

Beer culture is part of the city's identity. Six big breweries supply the Oktoberfest; beer gardens are places where people of every class share a table; and the calendar runs from the Strong Beer Festival in Lent through the spring fair and the Auer Dult to Oktoberfest itself. The coopers' Schäfflertanz, a guild dance that began in Munich, is meant to be held every seven years.

FC Bayern Munich, the most successful club in Germany, and 1860 Munich divide football loyalties. The city is Catholic by tradition, though about 45 per cent of residents now belong to no religion, and since the 1960s the Glockenbachviertel has been the heart of a gay scene that by the 1980s was counted among the best known in the world. The Bavarian dialect lives on alongside Standard German.

Munich had about 1.6 million inhabitants in November 2024, with around 3 million in the metropolitan area. It is the most densely populated municipality in Germany, and about 30 per cent of residents are foreign nationals, the largest groups Turkish and Croatian. Housing is the city's greatest worry: rents and property prices are among the highest in Germany, and a long-term plan adopted in 2011 aims to build denser housing and new estates on the edges.

The economy is the strongest of any German city. BMW, Siemens, Allianz and Munich Re have their headquarters here, alongside more DAX companies than any other German city, Europe's largest publishing industry, and research bodies such as the Max Planck and Fraunhofer societies and two elite universities, LMU and TUM. Unemployment, at 5.4 per cent in July 2026, was the lowest of any German city with more than a million people.

Daily life mixes tradition and wealth. Commuters ride the S-Bahn and U-Bahn in from the suburbs, cyclists fill the paths all year, and summer evenings are spent in beer gardens or by the Isar. In October 2025 two-thirds of voters backed a bid for a future Olympic Games, and in 2026 the city elected Dominik Krause of the Greens as mayor.

Munich's cooking is Bavarian. The city's own speciality is the Weißwurst, invented here in 1857: a white sausage of minced veal and pork back fat flavoured with parsley, lemon, mace, onion, ginger and cardamom, heated in water rather than boiled, eaten without its skin and traditionally only before noon, with sweet mustard and a fresh pretzel. Schweinshaxe is a roasted pork knuckle, served in Bavaria with potato dumplings and red cabbage or with sauerkraut and potatoes. Leberkäse, a finely ground loaf of beef, pork and bacon baked in a bread tin, is the classic snack in a roll, and Obatzda, a spread of aged soft cheese such as Camembert mashed with butter, paprika and a little beer, belongs on every beer-garden table.

Beer is the city's drink. Helles, a pale lager, and Dunkel, the older dark style coloured by Munich malts, are the traditional Munich lagers; lighter beers became common only in the later 19th century. Weissbier, wheat beer, is a local favourite, and Starkbier, the strongest Munich beer at 6–9 per cent, belongs to Lent. The six big breweries are Augustiner, Hacker-Pschorr, Hofbräu, Löwenbräu, Paulaner and Spaten-Franziskaner, joined by a growing number of small brewers.

The Viktualienmarkt has sold food in the heart of the old town since 1807, and Schwabing's Elisabethmarkt serves its own district. The city also has a strong fine-dining tradition: Eckart Witzigmann opened the Tantris restaurant in Schwabing in 1971 and is credited with starting Germany's culinary revival, the Küchenwunder.