Marienplatz – its skating rink may have moved to Stacchus and beyond, and its Holiday market is dismantled precisely on the day after Christmas, leaving a space that is perfectly dimensioned but sort of devoid of civic life. This square, especially taken together with Marienhof on the other side of the Neues Rathaus, is unavoidable, physically difficult to bypass – or eliminate from view – when moving between different parts of the inner city, or looking for familiar silhouettes from church belfry viewing balconies. Don’t miss the Mariensule in front of the Neues Rathaus, particularly at night, a column topped by a statue of St Mary and surrounded by four putti, now dwarfed by taller structures all around, it was built by Maximilian I as the earliest in a series of similar monuments that sprang up N of the Alps after the Thirty Years War, and a decade or so older than one erected by Ferdinand III on Vienna’s Am Hof square. The streets around it – the atmospheric if somewhat plain Dienerstrasse and Burgstrasse to the East, and undistinguished but busy Theatinerstrasse to the West – are certainly worth exploring on foot, just keep your head up high so you could look past the heads of tourists. Cool boutique fronts, busy coffee places, and striking architecture in the distance provide a compelling backdrop. And Neue Rathaus is where new bourgeois Munich tries to be old patrician Brussels, with mixed success.
Lenbachplatz, Pacellistrasse and Kardinal-Faulhaber-Strasse. This is the opulent, dressy, patrician, even aristocratic epicenter of Munich. Lenbachplatz is the smart portion of its Ring boulevard. The monumental buildings facing the Altstadt along the Ring – the palatial, five story Courthouse block across from Stachus, the exquisite terracotta clad blocks across Lenbachplatz between Karlsplatz and Maximilianplatz, including the supremely proportioned Alte Borse – this are is the closest Munich comes to Barcelona, Paris, London, or some other thing big, metropolitan, Western. In eye candy and charm, this area competes only with the blocks across the Marienhof, along the Platzl to Mandarin Oriental to Viktualienmarkt.
The regal circuit of Max-Josephs-Platz, Residenz, Odeonsplatz. The city’s palace square from the early 1800’s – a distinguished but irregular look, each side framed by strangely dissimilar structures from the same Neoclassical period– offers some great angles, and some unfortunate ones. Munich’s opera theater is remarkably unremarkable and commonplace, such clumsy Palladian derivative exists nearly everywhere N of the Alps, from London to Moscow, which is regrettable. And even the S façade of the Residenz complex – inspired by Florence’s Palazzo Pitti and meant to dominate over all nearby space, it is undermined by excessively large parking lot of an open space in front and is better observed from the center of the square. Instead, turn your back to vaguely provincial looking facades lining Residenzstrasse and pretend looking across the square, towards Bayerisches Nationaltheater, but instead anchoring your sight on the frontal view of a stately and uncharacteristically humane stature of Max I Joseph, Bavarian duke turned king, in the middle. For a view of quintessential Munich from below the restaurant of the National Theater diagonally across to the SW corner of the square where Perusastrasse and Residenzstrasse meet, framed by the Zechbauerhaus and Bucherer buildings, with the towers of the Frauenkirche. Standing near the ornate entrance to the Residenz Treasury look across towards Altstadt, past the monument, at the perfect Neorenaissance proportions of Palais Toerring-Jettenbach, the colorful, low-rise Florentine horizontality of its loggia taking the entire side opposite the Munich Residence. Odeonsplatz is home to the city’s best Baroque architecture and outdoor sculpture. Theatinerstrasse is buzzing with shops and cafes. Felderrnhalle fits naturally here, turning large scale outdoor sculpture into street furniture.
Despite a deceptively compact inner city, Munich’s linear dimensions will sneak up on you. If only to remind you that this was the first European capital to embark on a major 19th century urban transformation into a major royal capital, when Ludwig I and Maximilian II commissioned the eponymous – and impossibly long and straight – neoclassical Ludwigstrasse and Maximilianstrasse, lined with civic buildings and monuments. Importantly, this took place decades before the boulevards of Paris or Vienna’s Ringstrasse. Briennerstrasse, the first of the four, was laid out at the start and at the start of the 19th century by Max I Joseph and Prinzregentstrasse, the last, by Prince Regent Luitpold, Maximilian II brother. Soviet-style-meets-Champs-Elysee would not be a fair description of these – overly harsh and perhaps grossly exaggerated but not entirely out of place – don’t let this stop you from exploring.
All four regal avenues stem from the center, arrested by purpose-built, free-standing, axially aligned monuments at their far end, each surrounded by a dedicated open space: Ludwigstrassse starts at Odeonsplatz, heads North, pierces through the enclosed University space between the symmetrical Professor-Huber-Platz and Geschwister-Scholl-Platz with its twin fountains, and culminates at the Siegestor Triumphal Arch and the Academy of Fine Arts; Briennerstrasse starts at Odeonsplatz, heads West, pierces through the circle of Karolinenplatz with its bronze Obelisk, and ends with the Konigsplatz Arch at the heart of the museum district; Maximilianstrasse starts out at Max-Josephs-Platz at the Southern end of the Residenz, heads East, pierces through the gentle opening around Maxmonument, and stops at the arcaded Maximilianeum facade of the Bavarian Provincial Parliament; Prinzregentstrasse starts out at Finanzgarten just outside the Northern end of the Residenz, heads East, pierces through the widening between Bayerisches Nationalmuseum and Bayerisches Staatsministerium fur Wirtschaft, Energie und Technologie (Ministry for Economic Affairs, Energy and Technology), before ending at Neoclassical Friendensengel column on the other bank of Isar, in the middle of the same park as Maximilianeum.
Ludwigstrasse is easily the grandest, most elegant, most inviting, and uniform of the four planned arteries, a noble extension of Theatinerstrasse and Odeonsplatz from the Residenz complex outward towards Schwabing, and the only one that runs North-South. The avenue’s near end – the facade of the Festsaalbau or Banqueting Hall Tract of the Residenz overlooking the Renaissance Court Gardens most notably – was boldly laid out and designed by Leo von Klenze, its far end – starting with the monumental and Italianate Bayerische Staatsbibliothek and elegant Neo-Romanesque St Ludwig’s church, the main building of the 15th century Ludwig Maximilian University, relocated to Munich in the early 1800’s, the Siegestor, the Victory Gate – was painstakingly detailed by Klenze’s successor as Ludwig’s court architect Friedrich von Gartner. Of all Munich‘s addresses, Italy is most at home on Ludwigstrasse, the long, palatial, arcaded facades, the colonnades, the statuary lining the block long entablatures certainly tell you to hut up and stop questioning, Munich really is where Italy starts. Somewhat more residential and walkable Briennerstrasse could easily contest this ranking, claiming exclusivity thanks to its opulent store fronts and relatively compact dimension and central location. Both Ludwigstrasse and Briennerstrasse share their origin at Odeonsplatz. Both Maximilianstrasse and Prinzregentstrasse share Eastward direction, their origins straddle the Residenz palace and garden complex.
Three of the four avenues are walkable, just keep in mind that you would be walking past austere facades with pretty minimalist detail, institutional, one might say palatial, military barracks of Neoclassical proportions. These avenues, important as they are to Europe’s urban planning legacy, are not quite where the action is. I would spend my walking calories elsewhere – throughout the Altstadt and if you need to be on the path or within reach of local fashion boutiques, stay within reach of the outer arc of the old city blocks closest to the ring. Here distances are cut shorter by the density of places to stop for a drink or an espresso shot.
I find the most famous of the four avenues, Maximilianstrasse, to be the most intimidating and least user friendly. Pedestrian scene is not its main currency and is plainly lacking, drowned in all this deliberate monumentality, too broad for its buildings, facade heights dwarfed by its irreconclable width. I would limit my presence here to transverse movement, my sensory intake to looking down its length to the West and to the East while crossing it. Thankfully, the linear perspective of Maximillianstrasse offers a distraction, its far end is clearly defined and well-articulated – by a mirage of a monument to Max II, and the unmissable projection of Maximilianeum behind it, crowning a remote site on the other bank of Isar. This elevated, winged, Italianate façade – 33 arched window bays and 15 cornice statues in extension – is an island that splits the boulevard into streams, firmly sealing off any propagation of the cityscape further to the East. Could this eclectic cash register-like edifice from the 1850’s have been the inspiration for Vittorio Emanuele’s marble version in Rome, more commonly referred to by the shape of the apparatus it resembles? Acting as the end abutment to Corso at Rome’s piazza Venezia, Il Vittoriano similarly defines the outer boundary of the ‘modern’ metropolis. Both palatial structures sprang up as monuments, symbolic and decorative, both certainly wish to invoke the Imperial Rome in their structural and outward appearance. Rome’s commemorates the new capital’s role in the national unification – Munich’s imitation forum merely celebrates Maximilian II and his short-lived aspirations of sovereignty for one land-locked German province, these days housing the Bavarian provincial parliament.
For all its beauty, the Bavarian capital can feel institutional, official, military encampment like. By and large, Munich’s civic and monumental facades gives them the look and feel of military barracks, old school. Or maybe that’s just ruthless German efficiency. Not that there is anything wrong with that: pre-WWI garrison quarters can be just fine – the historic Stiftkaserne off Mariahilfestrasse behind Vienna’s Museumsquartier or the landmark Rossauer Kaserne anchoring Vienna’s Ring at its NW end – but Munich’s endless stretches of institutional building fronts are a far cry. Munich’s long avenues stand devoid of life, visually unfinished – beyond their innermost blocks anchored by well-proportioned but overextended facades of multitudes of provincial government, administrative, and academic buildings closest to the center – and seem functionally unnecessary. Anchored at various points by impressive neoclassical buildings with long facades of palatial proportions, often with enviable skyline features, visible and recognizable, these major streets nevertheless suffer from an approach to city planning that left voids in the form of insufficiently tall or distinguished or utilized buildings along their length.
Anything with ‘Bayerische’ on the plaque – administrative or cultural – is bound to be generously endowed with length, depth, pavilions, as a rule equipped with spacious interior courtyards, endowed an unexplainable sense of noble proportion, each side necessarily dozens of window bays long. And if ‘Bayerische’ is followed by ‘Staatsministerium’ on that plaque, watch out – prepare for 25, 40, 70 window bays facing the front sidewalk – at a minimum, shed the futile hope of fitting the building’s length into your view, or your camera’s viewfinder. Walk off to a sufficient distance to capture the building length, and you will find nearby city blocks inevitably in the way: not every one of these facades opens onto a parvis, and streets were not meant for viewing a continuous 70 window long stretch. Your best hope is to see a wall segment, a courtyard, a fragment – of this oversized, impeccably proportioned, and perfectly symmetrical building avancorpo, flanked by transverse wings and lengthwise bastions at the ends – and imagine the rest.
