Munich

Al Caminetto

Small restaurant run by two Sardinian ladies, mixed reviews for quality.

Sun-Fri 11:30-14:30, 17:30-22:00

Alte Pinakothek

Contains hundreds of great European masterworks dating from the 14th to the 18th centuries, including the largest Rubens collection in the world. Café Klenze is its pleasant bakery cafe.

Tue Wed 10:00-20:30, Fri-Sun 10:00-18:00·Adult €7, concession €5, Sundays €1

Alte Utting

This ship was a steamer on a Bavarian lake until 2016. It now perches on a railway bridge, an offbeat venue undecided whether it's The Flying Dutchman or The Flying Scotsman. It has beer, grills, live music, cabaret and disco, a beer garden, and from the upper deck surely the most unusual view over Munich.

Tue-Thu 16:00-00:00, Fri 16:00-02:00, Sat 11:00-01:00, Sun 11:00-22:00

Asam Schlössl

Upscale Bavarian restaurant and beer garden in an 18th century villa.

Tue-Sun 11:30-23:00

Asamkirche

This Late Baroque confection was built from 1733 to 1746 as a private chapel by Egid Quirin Asam - he could see the altar from his house next door. His brother, Cosmas Damian Asam, did the frescoes. The church is dedicated to St John Nepomuk (1345-93), a Bohemian monk cast into the river Vltava in Prague at the behest of King Wenceslaus IV. Legend has it that Nepomuk refused to divulge the queen's confessional secrets, but his real crime was to back the wrong candidate for abbot. The church is wonderful by candlelight, especially at the Christmas Eve service, replete with Bavarian singers in the choir stall.

Sun-Thu 09:00-18:00, Fri 13:00-18:00

Astor Film Lounge

ARRI cinema

Plush repertory cinema within the building of camera manufacturer ARRI.

Atzinger

Trad Bavarian cuisine plus your standard burgers and fries. Atmosphere and prices are aimed at students.

Sun-Wed 12:00-23:00 Thu-Sat 12:00-01:00

Augustiner Schützengarten

Pleasant beer hall and garden with 3000 seats serving Augustiner beer and trad food. On Sunday from 17:00 they have a live band.

Sun-Thu 11:00-23:00, Fri Sat 11:00-00:00

Augustiner Stammhaus

Beer hall and restaurant of Augustiner brewery, founded in 1294, great atmosphere, beer and trad food. They have another beerhall on Arnulfstraße, see Munich/Maxvorstadt).

Mon-Sat 11:00-00:00, Sun 11:00-22:00

Augustiner-Keller

This brewery was first documented in 1328, within the Augustinian monastery next to Frauenkirche, where they nowadays run a restaurant. The monastery was dissolved in 1803 (no, not in the beer) and the business has mostly been in private ownership since, on various near-centre sites - they've not followed the modern trend of an edge-of-city industrial park. Their beers are popular in south Germany but little is exported, so tuck in here. Augustiner took over an existing beer garden here in 1862 and expanded it into a 5000-seater: this is open April-Oct, while the beer hall and restaurant are year-round. No brewery tours, they no longer use an ox-driven winch to hoist the beer barrels, and there are no more public hangings of army deserters, so you'll just have to gawp at your phone if conversation fails.

Daily 11:00-23:00

Aumeister

This is at the very north end of English Garden so tourists are rare. There's a bosky 2500-seater beer garden, and restaurant in one of Prince Regent Luitpold's hunting lodges. It remains closed in 2022.

Closed

BMW Museum

Extensive museum displaying the evolution of motoring technology, from the earliest days to future concepts.

Tue-Sun 10:00-18:00·Adult €10, conc or child €7

Backstage

Live events complex with three venues for shows. The smaller ones are more like club / disco and can go on to 05:00.

Bahnwärter Thiel

Techno club and alternative cultural centre that resides in graffiti-covered pile of ship containers. The inventory of the club includes many curiosities such as discarded subway cars, trams, construction cranes or carriages. The venue also has an outdoor rave area where the DJ resides within the cab of a decommissioned subway car. The operators also run the Alte Utting lake steamer which has somehow ended up on a railway bridge only a few minutes walk away and has become a bar.

Basketball: FC Bayern Munich

They're better known as a soccer club, but Bayern Munich also play in Basketball Bundesliga, the game's top tier. Their home court is Rudi-Sedlmayer-Halle, sponsored as Audi Dome. It seats 6700 and was built in 1972 for the Olympics.

Bavaria Filmstadt

Theme park in working film studios: the standard ticket is a 90-min guided tour of the sets (but only in German) and a 10-min ride in a 4D cinema. Discounts if you come by public transport or on your birthday. The studios were established in 1919 by Peter Ostermayr (1882-1967), who then moved elsewhere to make a score of films in the heimat tradition (set in a romanticized horse-drawn bygone Germany, forerunner to the US cowboy westerns). Films made here include Alfred Hitchcock's The Pleasure Garden (his first, in 1925), Lola Montez (Max Ophüls 1954), Paths of Glory (Stanley Kubrick 1957), One, Two, Three (Billy Wilder 1961), The Great Escape (John Sturges 1963), The Sound of Music (Robert Wise 1965), Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (Mel Stuart 1971), Cabaret (Bob Fosse 1972), The Serpent's Egg (Ingmar Bergman 1977), Das Boot (Wolfgang Petersen 1981) and The Neverending Story (Wolfgang Petersen 1984). Note: this location is outside of the city boundary (Geiselgasteig bei München, Gemeinde Grünwald)

Tue-Sun 09:00-18:00·Adult €20, child €18

Bavaria statue and Hall of Fame

Early 19th century Bavaria was a pawn in conflicts between Austria and Napoleonic France, so when Ludwig I came to the throne in 1825, he sought an iconic statue to symbolise Bavaria's strength and independence, and a hall of fame to celebrate its heroes. There was a design competition, and since Ludwig was a great admirer of classical Greece, that was the style that won. The ensemble was completed in 1850, and casting the 18.5 m female statue in bronze was a huge engineering challenge. A stairway within ascends to a viewing platform in her head, so you can see what she sees. It's mobbed and claustrophobic during Oktoberfest (when it opens late), as it looks onto the nearby Wiesn grounds. The Hall of Fame was bombed out in the Second World War but re-opened by 1972. The display of famous Bavarians is not static but evolves to recognise new stars. The Hall of Fame is closed during Oktoberfest.

Apr-mid Oct daily 09:00-18:00; in Oktoberfest statue 09:00-20:00, hall closed·Adult €5, concessions €4

Bavarian Public Observatory Munich

Bayerische Volkssternwarte München

The observatory is open to the public M-F after dark with 2-hour tours - Monday these are in English. Pick a clear night.

Sep-Mar: Mon-Fri 20:00-21:30, Apr-Aug: Mon-Fri 21:00-23:00·Adult €8, concession €5

Bavariapark beer garden

Beer garden and restaurant serving Augustiner with 1500 seats, on the park between Deutsches Museum Verkehrszentrum and the Bavaria Statue. It's also next to Theresienwiese the venue of Oktoberfest, but if you come out of there in need of a beer something's amiss.

Daily 12:00-00:00

Bayerisches Nationalmuseum

Huge and fascinating museum of European history from the Middle Ages until early 20th century. There's armour, pottery, furniture, fashions, porcelain, beer mugs, the lot; plus Oct-April a display of nativity scenes. The Bollert medieval art collection is only open Th F 10:00-17:00.

Tue Wed Fri-Sun 10:00-17:00, Thu 10:00-20:00·Adult €7, conc €6; Sunday €1; child free

Bayern Munich training ground

These pitches host junior teams of Bayern Munich, right down to 8 year olds - so some of them will be star players five or six World Cups from now, imagine. The first team also trains here with a public session at least once a week. They're usually happy to oblige with autographs and selfies.

Free

Beer and Oktoberfest Museum

History of the festival, in a townhouse of 1340. The "Himmelsleiter" is its characteristic early staircase, a straight flight with no corners.

Tue-Sat 13:00-18:00·€4 adults, €2.50 concessions

Bergwolf

German fast-food, dishing up sausages, fries, beer and rock music late into the night. Reviewers continue to praise their Currywurst.

Mon-Tue 12:00-15:00, 18:00-00:00,Wed- Fri 12:00-15:00, 18:00-02:00, Sat 12:00-04:00, Sun 17:00-22:00

Blitz Club

Techno club in the former historic congress hall of the Deutsches Museum. One of the main venues for techno in Munich with a regular international DJ lineup. It also offers a series of gay events called Cruise. Note that the club has a strict ban on photography and filming.

Fri Sat 23:00-08:00

Blutenburg Castle

Schloss Blutenburg

This was built in 1438 as a hunting lodge for Albert III, Duke of Bavaria. It was on a river island between two arms of the River Würm, with the east arm dammed to create an ornamental lake - leisure rather than defence was always the intention here, and the ring wall, towers and gatehouse weren't designed against serious assault. It was embellished and extended by Albert's son Duke Sigismund, the stand-out being the chapel of 1488 in late Gothic style. Since 1983 the castle has housed the International Youth Library (Internationale Jugendbibliothek) so there is limited public access to the interior. You enter through the gatehouse into the courtyard. A stepped ramp or "ox piano" leads to the upper courtyard, with the Herrenhaus or mansion. The castle often hosts concerts and other cultural events and has a restaurant. Just outside is a modern sculpture park: notable works are the Spanish stone cross, the "plastic-granite" blocks, the Joseph Michael Neustifter memorial, and the memorial to the 7000 sent on the death march from Dachau just ahead of the Allied advance.

Daily Apr-Sep 09:00-17:00, Oct-Mar 10:00-16:00·Free

Botanical Garden

Covering 21 ha, the Garden opened here in 1914 when it outgrew its original site on Karlsplatz. It holds some 19,600 species, with an alpine garden, arboretum, rose garden, and extensive glasshouse collections.

Daily Apr-Oct 09:00-18:00, Nov-Mar 09:00-16:30·Adult €6.50, conc €4.50

Boulderwelt München Ost

In this large bouldering hall you can test your climbing skills without a harness on 13 different courses. It also has a competition wall, 3 child courses, a bistro, and an outdoor course with slackline park and beer garden in summer.

Daily 07:00-23:00·Adult €13.90, M–F before 16:00 €10.90

BoundCon

An event for BDSM fans. Held on a weekend in late May. Numerous live professional bondage shows, as well as custom photo shoots and workshops where you can try bondage yourself (advance registration required). For adults only, naturally.

12:00-23:00 mostly·€50 for a 3-day pass

CCC Container Collective

Container Collective is a ziggurat of shipping containers on Atelierstraße (corner with Friedenstraße) on the southeast flank of Ostbahnhof, the start of Werksviertel. It's billed as an art space but (in true bohemian style) no artistic work actually gets done and you come for the bars. As of 2022, these are Bar of Bel Air (daily 17:00-22:00), Transit Rooftop & Bar, and Kaserne de Janeiro cafe.

Café Crönlein

Café-bar in a former public restroom, an odd little stone building that looks more like a park attendant's tool shed. There's more capacity in summer when you can sit outside.

Sun Tue 15:00-21:00, Mon Wed-Sat 17:00-23:00