50 Fun Facts About Munich

Munich's name comes from an old German word for which people, one of whom appears on its coat of arms?

Monks. A hooded monk has been on the city seal since 1239, but artists drew him younger and younger until he became the 'Münchner Kindl', the Munich child.

Munich sits on which river?

The Isar. It rises in the Austrian Alps and joins the Danube downstream of Munich, so the meltwater rushing through the city ends up in the Black Sea.

Which duke founded Munich around 1158 to draw the salt trade away from a bishop's toll bridge to his own?

Henry the Lion. Legend has him burning the Bishop of Freising's bridge by night; what is certain is that in 1158 the emperor let his new market stand but made him hand the bishop a third of its tolls.

Which dynasty ruled Bavaria from Munich until the revolution of 1918?

The Wittelsbachs ruled Bavaria for 738 years. The end came overnight: on 7 November 1918 King Ludwig III slipped out of Munich with his family as Kurt Eisner declared a republic.

Whose 1806 reward to Bavaria made Munich a royal capital?

Napoleon Bonaparte. The alliance also brought Bavaria lands in Franconia and Swabia, which gave the state roughly the shape it still has today.

Munich's first Oktoberfest, in October 1810, was held to celebrate what?

Crown Prince Ludwig's wedding. The whole city was invited to celebrate on a meadow outside the gates, and Munich has thrown its party on that same field ever since.

What was the main event of Munich's very first Oktoberfest in 1810?

A horse race, proposed by a National Guard major, closed the celebrations; beer stalls came only later. Repeating the race a year on began the annual festival, though the race itself was dropped long ago.

Since 1950 the Mayor of Munich has opened Oktoberfest by tapping the first keg and shouting what?

O'zapft is! is Bavarian for 'It's tapped!'. The city counts how many mallet blows the mayor needs, so mayors practise; the best have done it in two.

What do Munich locals call Oktoberfest, after its meadow?

The Wiesn, Bavarian for 'the meadow'. In 2023 a public holiday stretched the festival to 18 days instead of 16, and a record 7.2 million visitors came.

Which essential beer ingredient is missing from the purity law Munich adopted in 1487 and all Bavaria in 1516?

Yeast. The law allowed only barley, hops and water: brewers seeded each batch with dregs from the last without understanding what did the work, so it was written into the rules only centuries later.

Which Munich beer hall began in 1589 as Duke William V's own brewery, set up to replace imported beer?

The Hofbräuhaus began as the duke's private brewery. In the 1890s the brewing moved out to the edge of town and the old site was rebuilt as a beer hall, where no beer has been brewed since.

By tradition, when is Munich's white sausage, the Weisswurst, supposed to be eaten?

Before noon: the saying goes that a Weisswurst must never hear the midday church bells. The usual explanation is that the unsmoked sausages, made fresh each morning, spoiled quickly before refrigeration.

Munich's Marienplatz is named after a column raised in thanks when Swedish occupiers spared the city in which war?

The Thirty Years' War. Elector Maximilian had vowed a monument if his cities were spared, yet the square stayed 'Schrannenplatz', after its grain market, until 1854, when it took the column's name.

What does the Munich Glockenspiel's upper scene re-enact?

A jousting tournament, held on Marienplatz in 1568 for a ducal celebration. The result never changes: every day the Bavarian knight beats his rival from Lorraine.

In legend, Munich's coopers first danced to lure people back outdoors after what?

The plague, in the legend. The barrel-makers still dance it only every seven years and their figures turn daily on the town hall clock, but the first record dates from 1702, and historians think it was simply a guild custom.

According to legend, who left the black footprint in the entrance hall of Munich's cathedral?

The devil, in the tale. From that one spot the pillars once hid every window, a trick the builder used to fool him; his stamp left the mark, and his rage is said to blow still as the wind around the towers.

A 2004 referendum barred new Munich buildings from rising above which landmark?

The Frauenkirche, whose twin towers stand just under 99 metres. The vote passed with barely half the ballots and stopped two skyscrapers Siemens had planned, though it was legally binding for only a year.

Which sprawling Munich park was begun in 1789 on the advice of an American-born scientist?

The English Garden. Benjamin Thompson, a Massachusetts-born physicist who had sided with the British, was reforming Bavaria's army and wanted gardens for its soldiers; the plan grew into a park for everyone, and he became Count Rumford.

Which sport made a standing wave on Munich's Eisbach stream famous around the world?

River surfing. Surfers rode the wave year-round until it vanished after routine riverbed cleaning in autumn 2025; when activists installed a beam at Christmas to bring it back, the city had it removed.

King Ludwig I's grand neoclassical buildings earned Munich a nickname likening it to which city?

Athens. The Greece-mad Ludwig I filled Munich with temple-fronted museums and gates, but he gave up his throne in the revolution of 1848, which his scandalous affair with the dancer Lola Montez helped to set off.

Nymphenburg Palace, begun in 1664, was the birthplace in 1845 of which 'fairy-tale king'?

Ludwig II was born at Nymphenburg in 1845. His castle-building, Neuschwanstein included, ran up such debts that in 1886 his ministers had him declared insane, and days later he was found dead in Lake Starnberg.

Which Munich museum of science and technology opened on an island in the river in 1925?

The Deutsches Museum. Its founder, Oskar von Miller, was the engineer who in 1882 sent electric current some 60 km from Miesbach to an exhibition in Munich, the first long-distance transmission of power.

The Lenbachhaus displays which Munich-based modernist movement?

Der Blaue Reiter, the Blue Rider. Painter Gabriele Münter hid the group's pictures in her cellar through the Nazi years, then gave them to the Lenbachhaus on her 80th birthday in 1957.

Which Munich company began life during the First World War building aircraft engines?

BMW. When peace ended its warplane orders the company turned to motorcycles in the 1920s, and it did not enter the car business until 1928.

Hitler's failed 1923 coup attempt in Munich is known by what name?

The Beer Hall Putsch. Hitler fired a pistol into the ceiling to hijack a rally, but police stopped his march the next day; convicted of treason, he served only months and used them to dictate Mein Kampf.

Georg Elser's bomb in a Munich beer hall on 8 November 1939 missed Hitler by how much?

Minutes: Hitler left unexpectedly early, about 13 minutes before the blast. Georg Elser, a carpenter working alone, had spent weeks hollowing out a pillar beside the podium, and was caught that night trying to cross into Switzerland.

The 1938 Munich Agreement let Germany annex which region of Czechoslovakia?

The Sudetenland, handed over in exchange for Hitler's pledge of peace. Less than six months later he broke the pact and occupied the Czech provinces of Bohemia and Moravia as well.

Which concentration camp opened in March 1933 just outside Munich?

Dachau. Set up in a disused munitions factory weeks after Hitler took power, it became the model for every later camp and the school where the SS trained its guards.

The White Rose resistance group, led by Hans and Sophie Scholl, was based at which Munich university?

Ludwig Maximilian University. A janitor saw the Scholls scatter leaflets into its atrium on 18 February 1943 and turned them in; they were executed four days later, and the square outside now bears their name.

Whose troops captured Munich in April 1945, after bombing wrecked about half the city?

The US Army. Its troops marched in on 30 April 1945, the very day Hitler killed himself in Berlin, and took the city the Nazis had styled the 'Capital of the Movement'.

Which future pope served as Archbishop of Munich and Freising before being called to the Vatican?

Benedict XVI. As Joseph Ratzinger he led the archdiocese before Rome called him, and as pope he kept the pack-carrying bear of Saint Corbinian from his Munich coat of arms as a reminder of it.

Only two German cities are bigger than Munich, and both are states in their own right: Berlin and which other?

Hamburg. Like Berlin it is a city-state, a legacy of its centuries as a free Hanseatic trading port, which leaves Munich as Germany's largest city that is merely a state capital.

The 1972 Munich Olympics introduced Waldi, the first official Olympic mascot; what animal was he?

A dachshund. Waldi wore bright stripes in Olympic colours, and the organisers even laid out the Olympic marathon course in the shape of the dog, with runners starting at the back of his neck.

Which Palestinian group carried out the Munich massacre at the 1972 Olympics?

Black September, named after the month in 1970 when Jordan's army drove out Palestinian fighters. The botched police rescue led West Germany to found its GSG 9 counter-terrorism unit within weeks.

The tent-like roof of Munich's Olympic Stadium was designed with which pioneer of lightweight structures?

Frei Otto. As a prisoner of war in France he served as his camp's architect, and the shortage of materials there set him on a lifetime of building with tents, cables and nets instead of walls.

West Germany won the 1974 World Cup final at Munich's Olympic Stadium by beating which country?

The Netherlands, beaten 2-1. Johan Cruyff's side scored from a penalty before any German player had touched the ball, but Paul Breitner and Gerd Müller turned the match around before half-time.

The Allianz Arena's shell glows red for Bayern Munich; which club's home games used to turn it blue?

TSV 1860 Munich, who owned half the stadium when it opened in 2005. Short of money, the club sold its share to Bayern a year later and moved out in 2017 after dropping to the fourth tier.

Whose 2023-24 Bundesliga title ended Bayern Munich's run of eleven straight championships?

Bayer Leverkusen. Coached by former Bayern midfielder Xabi Alonso, a club so used to finishing second that it was nicknamed 'Neverkusen' won its first title without losing a single league game.

Which Munich-raised Bayern legend won the World Cup as West Germany's captain in 1974 and again as its manager in 1990?

Franz Beckenbauer, 'Der Kaiser'. As a boy he meant to sign for a rival Munich club, until one of its players slapped him during a youth match and he joined Bayern instead.

Munich Airport, opened in 1992, is named after which Bavarian politician?

Franz Josef Strauss, Bavaria's premier until his death in 1988. A private pilot who championed the new airport and chaired the Airbus supervisory board, he died four years before it opened.

Which coach company, launched in Munich in 2013 with a route to Nuremberg, went on to buy America's Greyhound?

FlixBus. Its founders pounced when Germany opened long-distance coach travel to competition in 2013, and from those first Bavarian routes the network had spread to more than 40 countries by the mid-2020s.

Which warm wind off the Alps can raise Munich's temperature sharply within hours?

The föhn. Air dries out and warms as it sinks down the sheltered side of a mountain range, which is why North Americans call the same kind of wind off the Rockies the 'snow eater'.

Which rock frontman lived in Munich from 1979 to 1985 and filmed his 39th birthday party there for a solo video?

Freddie Mercury. The party footage became the video for 'Living on My Own', which stalled at number 50 in Britain in 1985 but went to number one as a remix in 1993, nearly two years after his death.

Which Steve McQueen film was shot in 1962 at the Bavaria Film studios outside Munich and in the countryside nearby?

The Great Escape. Its prison camp was built in a forest clearing beside the studios, and the motorcycle chase, filmed on Bavarian meadows, was pure invention: McQueen, a keen rider, asked for it.

Munich is only the second-largest city in the Bavarian dialect area; which city is the largest?

Vienna. Bavarian dialects are spoken across most of Austria as well as in Bavaria itself, so the Austrian capital, with about two million people, outranks Munich among their speakers.

Which leader used the 2007 Munich Security Conference to denounce American dominance of world affairs?

Vladimir Putin. The stage he chose was founded in 1963 by Ewald von Kleist, who as a young army officer in 1944 had volunteered to blow himself up beside Hitler.

Which brewery, begun in a monastery in 1634, may serve beer at Munich's Oktoberfest?

Paulaner. Only beer brewed inside the city may be poured, which shuts out famous Bavarian neighbours such as Erdinger, and since 2022 an EU seal has reserved the name 'Oktoberfest beer' for Munich's brewers.

Which American disco star began her career in Munich, arriving in 1968 to sing in the German cast of 'Hair'?

Donna Summer. She learned German, took her stage name from her Austrian first husband, Helmuth Sommer, and in 1977 recorded 'I Feel Love' in a Munich studio with producer Giorgio Moroder.

Munich's oldest surviving public transport system is which mode?

The tramway, horse-drawn when it opened in 1876. A century later the city was closing lines to replace it with the new U-Bahn and buses, but the council changed course and new lines have opened since the 1990s.

Which Italian-style garden beside Munich's Residenz has a temple to the goddess Diana at its centre?

The Hofgarten, or court garden, laid out for Duke Maximilian I from 1613. On warm evenings its Diana temple turns into an open-air dance floor, taken over by Munich's tango dancers.