Munich

A tiny, overwhelming late-Baroque church the Asam brothers built beside their own house in the 1730s, barely eight metres wide and writhing on every surface with gilt, dark marble and figures. A skeletal Grim Reaper cuts the thread of life over the confessional, and the ceiling stages the soul’s passage toward death. Free, and almost too much. Go in.

Best shot Straight up the nave to the altar, the vertical crush of gilt and the ceiling.

• Touristy

Munich’s oldest parish church, and on a side altar its strangest sight: the skeleton of St. Munditia, a Roman catacomb martyr brought here in 1675, laid in a glass casket, dressed in jewels and gold mesh with glass eyes staring up and a vial of dried blood in one hand. Hidden away for most of the nineteenth century, back on view since 1883.

Best shot Through the glass at the bejewelled skull and glass eyes.

• Touristy

A plague cemetery of 1563 that became the city’s main burial ground before it closed to new graves in 1944, now a deliberately overgrown, ivy-choked park of weathered neo-Gothic tombs, mourning angels and crumbling mausolea. Half the notable dead of old Munich are here. A long, green, melancholy wander.

Best shot An overgrown tree-lined avenue of leaning gravestones, autumn light.

• Quiet
• Solo-friendly

Munich’s landmark brick-Gothic cathedral of the 1480s, twin onion-domed towers over the old town. Just inside the door is the Teufelstritt, a dark footprint said to be where the Devil stamped in fury at being tricked by the builder, and the crypt below holds the tombs of the Wittelsbach dukes and the city’s archbishops.

Best shot The twin towers from St. Peter’s, or the Devil’s Footstep in the floor.

• Touristy

The largest Renaissance church north of the Alps, a great white barrel-vaulted Jesuit nave, and down a stair by the altar the Wittelsbach crypt: some forty stark metal coffins, among them the flower-heaped tomb of “mad” King Ludwig II, who drowned in Lake Starnberg in 1886. A small fee to go down. Do.

Best shot Ludwig II’s coffin under its heaped fresh flowers.

• Quiet

A museum of dark humour and the absurd in the south tower of the medieval Isartor gate, given over to the comedian Karl Valentin and Liesl Karlstadt, its exhibits deliberately morbid and nonsensical: a melting snow sculpture, macabre gags, a cobwebbed nail. Reopened in 2026 after a long renovation. Closed Wednesdays.

• Solo-friendly

A bright-yellow high-Baroque church on Odeonsplatz hiding a sombre crypt: the Fürstengruft, where some forty-seven of the Wittelsbachs lie in dark metal coffins, the Emperor Charles VII among them, a stark contrast to the white ornament overhead. The crypt is a small visit, combined with St. Michael’s.

• Quiet

A gilded Madonna on a marble column in the main square, put up in 1638 in thanks for Munich surviving the Swedish occupation and the plague of the Thirty Years War. Around the base, four armoured bronze putti fight off the four scourges of the age: a basilisk for plague, a lion for war, a serpent for heresy, a dragon for famine. Look down, not up.

Best shot A base putto driving its sword into the plague-basilisk.

A discreet design hotel off the Viktualienmarkt built on shadow rather than brightness: rough flagstone in the lobby, bog-oak floors and panelling, natural stone and bronze, a big stone fireplace. Hushed, tactile and low-lit, the moodiest bed in the old town.

• Adults only
• Quiet

A thirty-six-room hotel in a nineteenth-century townhouse on a quiet Lehel street, furnished in old antiques, gilded mirrors and chandeliers with an old-fashioned library and a leafy patio. Romantic, faded-grand, and ten minutes from Marienplatz.

• Adults only
• Quiet

The oldest hotel in Munich, taking guests since 1490 beside the medieval Isartor gate, begun as a tavern on the old salt road and run by the same family since 1903, its late-Gothic bones kept behind panelled, restored interiors. Liszt and Mendelssohn slept here.

• Adults only

A family hotel in an 1897 Art Nouveau villa near the Oktoberfest meadow, an opulent carved wooden staircase, a chandeliered lobby with stucco cherubs and gilded mirrors, antique-style rooms. Vintage old-Germany, a stop from the station.

• Adults only

A Bavarian tavern on a quiet lane off Marienplatz, on the spot since 1487 and one of the oldest inns in the city, a low cross-vaulted room of dark panelling, painted ceiling flowers, iron chandeliers and hunting trophies, candlelit at night. Schweinshaxe under the arches.

Best shot The cross-vaulted room by candlelight.

• Adults only

The oldest wine house in Munich, in a townhouse whose vaulted rooms were once part of a fifteenth-century seminary, a survivor of the war that keeps the old ritual: vaulted ceilings, panelling, white-jacketed waiters, candlelit tables and silver. Bavarian and Viennese cooking, a long German list.

• Adults only

A beer-hall and cellar complex of 1812 under old chestnut trees, tied to Munich’s oldest brewery, and below the halls the brick-vaulted Lagerkeller, once the summer beer store, now a dungeon-like arched room for candlelit feasts. Augustiner from wooden barrels, and plenty of it.

• Adults only
• Party scene

A rustic wine tavern built into the vaulted arcades of the Residenz, the old royal palace, neoclassical columns and candle-warmed rooms, a cellar of thirty thousand bottles, Palatinate wines poured from stemless glasses. Old-world and subterranean.

• Adults only

A witch’s shop of thirty-odd years, dark wooden shelves crammed with apothecary incense, ritual candles, gemstones, magical oils, tarot, pendulums and ouija boards. One of the few real Hexenläden in the city, and the occult end of a black wardrobe.

• Solo-friendly
• Quiet

A horror and alternative shop since 1986 behind a macabre skull-carved front, costumes, masks and special-effects gore alongside a big rack of black gothic and punk clothing, accessories and piercings. The skulls over the door tell you what you are walking into.

• Solo-friendly

A self-styled Wunderkammer of curated vintage clothing from the 1880s to the 1970s, antique jewellery, oddities and collectible curios, rare gowns and archive pieces among engraved silver and strange objects. Cash only, and worth the cash.

• Solo-friendly

A second-hand record shop since the eighties, some half a million used LPs and CDs over two hundred square metres, the racks running heavy to metal, plus wave, punk, krautrock and psych. A long, crammed, fluorescent-lit dig.

• Solo-friendly

A family antiquarian bookshop since 1968 in the university quarter, stacked floor to ceiling with rare and used books, old bound magazines and, best of all, antique engravings and decorative prints. A proper old-world browse.

• Solo-friendly
• Quiet