The Complete Munich Travel Guide

One thing before you start: every place on this map was chosen one at a time, by someone who cared which beer garden pours from the wooden barrel and which one just has the bigger sign. Nothing here was lifted off a top-ten list.

Use the top navigation tabs to move between the curated routes, the places worth seeing, where to eat, where to stay and the trips out of town. If you only have a minute, jump to the ⚡ Quick Facts panel: transport, money and timing, in one screen.

About Munich: Everything You Need to Know Before You Go

This complete Munich travel guide covers the U-Bahn and the day ticket that actually saves money, the beer gardens where you are allowed to bring your own food, what Oktoberfest is really like from the inside, the free things to do that locals do anyway, and how to reach Neuschwanstein and Salzburg without a car. Bookmark it before you book the flight.

Munich is 1.6 million people on a gravel plain the Isar cut out of the Alps, and it behaves less like a German metropolis than like a very rich Alpine town that kept growing. The old centre is small enough to cross on foot in twenty minutes, ringed by three surviving medieval gates. Everything else fans out from it: the university and the galleries north, the river and the swimming south, the Oktoberfest field west, and the Alps close enough that on a clear day you can see them from a church tower.

Whether you are here for three nights or a full week, the sections below cover how to get around, what to book before you arrive, where the good beer actually is, and the handful of things worth leaving the city for.