We headed for the ‘old town’ on our first morning in Munich.  Benedictine Monks settled the Old Town in the 700’s, and Munich (Munchen) means “by the monks”. Initially surrounded by medieval walls, it’s filled with historic beer halls, museums, medieval churches, and the royal Residenz. It was heavily bombed during WWII, but after the war, Munich elected to rebuild and restore the historic part of the town rather than create a new modern city on the spot (as happened in Berlin and Frankfurt)

Karlsplatz Square

While cars do enter in parts, it’s primarily pedestrian plazas. Everywhere you look, there is something historic to photograph or explore. We passed through Karlsplatz Square and then through the medieval city gates built in 1337.

Fountain Boy sits just inside the New House City Gate.  Initially, the fountain was built in the middle of Karlsplatz Square in 1895. However, it was moved to the pedestrian zone right before the 1972 Olympics.  It depicts a naked boy shielding his face as Satyr (a drunk Greek woodland God) spits water at him.  Legend has it that the Munich citizens were outraged that a leaf didn’t cover the boys’ privates, but it’s since become one of the favourite fountains.

Citizens Hall

The first stop on our walk was the Citizen’s Hall (built in 1810).  It stands out among the neighbouring buildings with a bright pink facade, but the interior’s gold-accented altar truly dazzles.  The altar and painted frescoes were added in 1778 when Citizen’s Hall was converted into a church. Unfortunately, it was heavily damaged in WWII, and as a result of the careful rebuild, it looks the same now as it did in the 1700s.

St Michaels Church

From the Citizens Hall, we visited Saint Michael’s Church. Constructed in 1588, the vast interior has a barrel-vaulted roof and claims it is the largest Renaissance church north of the Alps.  Saint Michael’s Church is so large it served as the head of the Catholic Church’s Counter-Reformation efforts in the 1500s. Unfortunately, because of damage from the war, Saint Michael’s Church wasn’t rebuilt with the same over-the-top stucco interior as many other churches in Munich have. But it’s well worth seeing.  The bronze sculpture of St Michael fighting a demon-like protestant stands over the building entrance.  Interestingly, it was the only part of the church’s facade that survived the bombing of WWII.

The rows of re-created statues at the front of the church portray the Counter-Reformation, an anti-Protestant movement in the late 1500s in which Saint Michael’s Church was the centre.

Bears in Bavaria

Walking further along, we came to the Hunting and Fishing museum with its Bronze Boar in front. We waited for ages to get an image of the boar. Everyone stopped to get their photo taken with it.  It seems hunting boar, and fishing is very popular in Germany.  Finally, we got our shots and moved on.

The museum also houses the last bear shot in the Bavarian forests, preserved by taxidermy.  One of the guides told us the woods used to be full of bears, but there had been no bears in the forest since 1836.  They didn’t know why. Finally, one solitary bear turned up (after 170 years) in 2006 and enjoyed swimming in the lakes, eating honey and killing the odd sheep for seven weeks. However, a group of hunters shot him dead as a ‘risk to humans.  And they wonder where the bears went. 

“It’s not that we don’t welcome bears in Bavaria. It’s just that this one wasn’t behaving properly,” Otmar Bernhard, an official with Bavaria’s environment ministry, said.

The Guardian News

Town Hall

Facing the main square (Marienplatz), the massive ‘new’ town hall is stunning and impressive. This was built in order to accommodate the bureaucracy of the growing population of Munich. Taking over 40 years to build, construction started in 1867.  It has six courtyards and over 400 rooms.  Dominating the facade is a two-story, 280ft tall glockenspiel complete with 43 bells making it the largest in Germany.

While the figures in the clock look small (due to the structure’s height), they are, in reality, life-sized.  The town hall was largely spared during the bombing in WWII, with only the roof burnt off and some statues damaged.  We took the elevator to the top of the tower you see above to see the view over the old town.

The Fish Fountain

Outside the new town hall, in the square, is the Fish Fountain.  The fountain has been there since the 1400s, was given a three-storey makeover in 1860 and was levelled by the bombings in WWII. However, three butcher boy statues from the 1860 makeover were recovered and reused in a new fish fountain built in 1954.

The huge Holy Ghost church was built as a chapel in 1392 in the Hospice of the Holy Ghost, a medieval order flourishing in the 1300s. In 1724 the church had a makeover when beautiful frescoes were added to the ceiling by the Asam brothers. When in 1885, the hospice was demolished, it also allowed the church to expand.  WWII bombings left only the original choir, buttresses, and North wall of the nave intact. 

This was my favourite church and ceiling we saw. The stunning ceiling murals have been recreated, the columns are topped with pink moulding, and around the church are seven large paintings depicting the “Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit.”

The Church of Our Lady, with the twin onion domes, dominates the Munich skyline (there are many churches in Munich).  Within the Old Town, a building height restriction ensured the towers would be seen, which was extended throughout the entire city in 2004 as skyscrapers started to pop up.

The church on the site was demolished in the 15th century, and the graveyard was removed to make way for a larger church.  All the tombstones were then incorporated into the outside walls of the building. 

St Peters

This would have been the most ornate, over the top church I visited.  There was gold everywhere, and the 18th-century gilded altar was ostentatious beyond belief.  A service had just concluded when we entered, and the priest had a field day swinging the incense.

Opera and Theatre were always ‘big’ in Munich (Beethoven, Bach, Brahms, Handel, Strauss, Wagner, anyone?), and Munich hosted theatre and opera performances since the early 1600s.  When the original hall burnt down in 1825, King Maximilian I built the current Greek columned opera house in 1825.  The 2100-seat opera house was the largest in Europe at its opening.  When mad king Ludwig II came to power, he expanded the opera house as he was obsessed with Wagner.  Like many buildings in the old town, it was reduced to rubble during the WWII bombings but was fully restored to its former glory.

Maps: we used an excellent free printable walking map Big Boy Travel