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Munich (München) is the third largest city of Germany (behind Berlin and Hamburg), and capital of the state of Bavaria. Previously it had been capital of the duchy and kingdom (1255-1918) and of the Republic of Bavaria (1918-1933). The city is a major transportation, cultural, commercial, and industrial center. It is located about 30 miles north of the Alps, between the Danube River and Germany's southern border. It lies on the banks of the Isar River, which flows through the middle of the city. The elevation of Munich is 1,700 feet above sea level, on the Bavarian plateau. The annual average temperature in Munich is about 45 F, or 7 C. Almost 1.5 million people live in the greater Munich area.

The city's motto is "München Mag Dich" ("Munich Likes You"), before 2006 it was "Die Weltstadt mit Herz" ("The World-Class City with Heart"). Its native name, München, is derived from the Old German word for Mönche, which means "Monks" in English. This is the reason for the monk on the city's coat of arms. Black and gold - the colours of the Holy Roman Empire - have been the city's official colors since the time of Ludwig the Bavarian (from the Wikipedia article).

Munich was founded (1158) by Henry the Lion, duke of Saxony and of Bavaria, who built a bridge near a settlement of Benedictine Monks (Munichen) that had been established in Carolingian times (8th century). In 1255 it was chosen as the residence of the Wittelsbach family, the dukes of Bavaria and later became (1506) the capital of the dukedom.

To force traders to use his bridge (and charge them for doing so) Henry destroyed a nearby bridge owned by bishop Otto von Freising (Freising). Henry and Otto took their quarrel to Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa in Augsburg in 1158. Frederick approved Henry's deed, but he appeased Otto by giving him an annual compensation. Frederick also confirmed Munich's trading and currency rights.

Bishop Otto had the last laugh. In 1180 Henry was deposed and Otto I Wittelsbach was appointed Duke of Bavaria, and Munich was handed over to the bishop of Freising. Otto's heirs, the Wittelsbach dynasty, would rule Bavaria for the next eight centuries. In 1240 Munich itself was transferred to Otto II Wittelsbach and in 1255, when the dukedom of Bavaria was split in two, Munich became the ducal residence of Upper Bavaria.

Duke Louis IV was elected German king in 1314 and crowned as Holy Roman Emperor in 1328. He strengthened Munich by granting it the salt monopoly, thus assuring regular and substantial income. Munich became the principal river crossing on the route from Salzburg to Augsburg. Salzburg (vicinity) was the source of salt, and Augsburg was at the time a larger city than Munich.

In the late 15th century Munich underwent a revival of gothic arts - the Old Town Hall was enlarged, and a new cathedral - the Frauenkirche - constructed 1468. The cathedral took twenty years to build, has become a well-known symbol for the city with its two brick towers and onion domes.

In 1506 Munich became capital of the whole of Bavaria and the center of the German Counter-Reformation. Duke Wilhelm V commissioned the Jesuit Michaelskirche, and also built the Hofbräuhaus for brewing brown beer in 1589. The Catholic League was founded in Munich in 1609.

In 1632 the city was occupied by Gustav II Adolph of Sweden. When the bubonic plague broke out in 1634 about one third of the population died.

After the Thirty-Years-War Munich quickly became a center of baroque life. Elector Ferdinand Maria’s consort Henriette Adelaide of Savoy invited numerous Italian architects and artists to the city, and built the Theatinerkirche and Nymphenburg palace on the occasion of the birth of their son and heir Maximilian II Emanuel, elector of Bavaria.

Munich was under the control of the Habsburg family for some years after Maximilian II Emanuel had made a pact with France in 1705 during the War of the Spanish Succession. The occupation led to bloody uprisings against the Austrian imperial troops followed by a massacre while farmers were rioting (the "Sendlinger Mordweihnacht" or Murder Christmas of Sendling). The coronation of Max Emanuel's son elector Charles Albert as Emperor Karl VII in 1742 led to another Habsburg occupation.

The city's first academic institution, the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, was founded in 1759 by Maximilian III Joseph, who abandoned his fore-father's imperial ambitions and made peace. From 1789 onwards, when the old medieval fortification was demolished, the English Garden was laid out - it is one of the world's largest urban public parks. By that time, the city was growing very quickly and was one of the largest cities in continental Europe. In 1806, it became the capital of the new Kingdom of Bavaria, with the state's parliament (the Landtag) and the new archdiocese of Munich and Freising being located in the city. Twenty years later Landshut University was moved to Munich. (In 1846 Munich's population was about 100,000, and by 1901 this had risen to about 500,000.)

Many of the city's finest buildings belong to this period and were built under the reign of King Ludwig I. These neoclassical buildings include the Ruhmeshalle with the Bavaria statue by Ludwig Michael von Schwanthaler and those on the magnificent Ludwigstraße and the Königsplatz, built by the architects Leo von Klenze and Friedrich von Gärtner. Under King Max II the Maximilianstraße was constructed in Perpendicular style.

The railways reached Munich in 1839, followed by trams in 1876 and electric lighting in 1882. The Technical University of Munich was founded in 1868. The city hosted Germany's first exhibition of electricity, and in 1930 the first ever television was showcased at the city's Deutsches Museum (founded in 1903) on the banks of the Isar. Numerous inventors and scientists worked in Munich, including Alois Senefelder, Joseph von Fraunhofer, Justus von Liebig, Georg Ohm, Carl von Linde, Rudolf Diesel, Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, Emil Kraepelin and Alois Alzheimer, and the young Albert Einstein attended the Luitpold Gymnasium. In 1901 the Hellabrunn Zoo opened in the city.

Munich also became a center of the arts and literature again, as Thomas Mann, Henrik Ibsen, Richard Wagner, Richard Strauss and many others prominent figures lived and worked there. Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider), a group of expressionist artists, was established in Munich in 1911.

Following the outbreak of World War I in 1914, life in Munich became very difficult, as the Allied blockade of Germany led to food and fuel shortages. During French air raids in 1916 three bombs fell on Munich. After World War I, the city was at the center of much political unrest. In November 1918 on the eve of revolution, Ludwig III and his family fled the city.

After the murder of the first republican premier of Bavaria Kurt Eisner in February 1919 by Anton Graf von Arco-Valley, a member of the right-wing Thule Gesellschaft (Thule Society), the Bavarian Soviet Republic (Bayerische Räterepublik or Münchner Räterepublik) was proclaimed. After Communists had taken power, Lenin, who had lived in Munich some years before, sent a congratulatory telegram, but the Soviet Republic was put down on May 3, 1919 by the Freikorps. After the Räterepublik had been brutally put down and the republican government had been restored, Munich subsequently became a hotbed of right-wing politics, among which Adolf Hitler and the Nazis rose to prominence.

In 1923 Hitler and his supporters, who at that time were concentrated in Munich, staged the Beer Hall Putsch, an attempt to overthrow the Weimar Republic and seize power. The revolt failed, resulting in Hitler's arrest and the temporary crippling of the Nazi Party, which was virtually unknown outside Munich. At the end of the Residentzstrasse, where the putsch resulted in the death of 16 Nazis and 4 policemen, the government of Bavaria placed a plaque after the war on the ground with the names of the 4 policemen that died there.

The city would once again become a Nazi stronghold when the Nazis took power in Germany in 1933. The Nazis created the first concentration camp at Dachau, 10 miles north west of the city. Because of its importance to the rise of Nazism, the Nazis called Munich the Hauptstadt der Bewegung ("Capital of the Movement"). The NSDAP headquarters were in Munich and many Führerbauten ("Führer-buildings") were built around the Königsplatz, some of which have survived to this day. During the Night of the Long Knives in 1934, Hitler eliminated potential political rivals. Ernst Röhm was killed in Munich's Stadelheim Prison.

In 1938, the Munich Agreement, Neville Chamberlain's famous act of appeasement to Hitler, was signed in the city by representatives of Germany, Italy, France and the Britain. It ceded the mostly German-speaking regions of Czechoslovakia called Sudetenland to Germany. One year later Georg Elser failed in an attempt to assassinate Hitler during his annual speech to commemorate the Beer Hall Putsch in the Bürgerbräukeller in Munich. The Bürgerbraukeller is no longer there, but other beerhalls where Hitler spoke, like the Hofbräukeller, the famous Hofbräuhaus and the Löwenbräukeller are still there. One of the examples of Nazi architecture in München is the Haus der Deutschen Kunst, an art museum designed by architect Paul Ludwig Troost.

Munich was the base of the White Rose (German: Die Weiße Rose), a group of students that formed a resistance movement from June 1942 to February 1943. The core members were arrested and executed following a distribution of leaflets in Munich University by Hans and Sophie Scholl.

The city was very heavily damaged by allied bombing during World War II - the city was hit by 71 air raids over a period of six years. After American occupation in 1945, Munich was completely rebuilt following a meticulous and - by comparison to other war-ravaged German cities - rather conservative plan which preserved its pre-war street grid.

In 1957 Munich's population passed the 1 million mark. In 1958 Munich hosted the Chess Olympiad.

Munich was the site of the 1972 Summer Olympics, during which Israeli athletes were assassinated by Palestinian terrorists (see Munich massacre), when terrorist gunmen from the Palestinian "Black September" group took hostage members of the Israeli Olympic team. A rescue attempt by the West German government was unsuccessful and resulted in the deaths of the Israeli hostages, five of the terrorists, and one German police officer.

The current (2007) Roman Catholic Pope -- Benedict XVI (Joseph Ratzinger) was ordained a priest in the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising on June 29, 1951. Ratzinger served as Archbishop of Munich from 1977 to 1982.

In December 2007 the German Olympic Committee unanimously agreed to support Munich's bid to host the 2018 Winter Olympics.

Munich traces its origin to the Benedictine foundation at Tegernsee. Henry the Lion granted it the right to hold a market in 1157-1158, and he therefore is held to be Munich's official founder. Henry built a bridge for east-west traffic over the Isar River and also established a mint. In the thirteenth century (1255) the Wittelsbach princes made it their residence and lavished royal wealth and patronage upon it for seven hundred years (until the 1918 revolution). In 1319 Emperor Ludwig the Bavarian began the construction of the second city wall,, which marked the city's limits until the beginning of the nineteenth century. In honor and memory of Henry the Lion, there are statues of lions, many quite whimsical, all over the city of Munich.

Click here for extensive information (in German) about Munich in the late middle ages.

It was Ludwig who began the beautification of Munich after a fire nearly destroyed the entire community in 1327. Gradually the city became one of the'great cultural centers of the world, as Bavarian kings built palaces, museums, parks, monuments, art galleries, and other buildings of extraordinary charm and beauty. In overwhelmingly Catholic Bavaria, Munich became a great religious and art center. (No Protestant was allowed to live in Bavaria until 1801.)

During the "Thirty-Years-War" Munich was occupied briefly by Gustavus Adolphus in 1632. There was an epidemic of plague from 1634 to 1635 in which one third of the population died. By 1854 the population of Munich had reached 100,000. Only fifty years later the population exceeded half a million.

During the nineteenth century Munich grew rapidly, and the majority of the interesting buildings were built. King Ludwig I in the early nineteenth century was greatly responsible for the city's development as a community of beauty. He built the Glyptothek and the Old and New Pinakotheks and constructed Ludwigstrasse, the famous street (running from Siegestor to Feldherrnhalle) along which are many of Munich's most beautiful buildings, including the state library, the Ludwigskirche and the university. It was under Ludwig's influence that Munich became a leader its German art. Ludwig commissioned the Konigsplatz and the Glyptothek, the Propylaen, the Staatsgalerie, and so on. Ludwig's son, Maximilian II (1848-1864) built the Maximilianstrasse and the building housing the Bavarian Landtag (diet).

In Munich a young rising politician named Hitler joined the Nationalsozialistische (Nazi-National Socialist) Deutsche Arbeiter Partei (German Workers' Party). Here Hitler became the leader of the Nazis, and organized his first party armed forces. In November 1923, Munich was the scene of Adolf Hitler's "Beer Hall Putsch." Since Munich was the "Capital of the Nazi Movement," the Nazi Party erected several structures in the city to glorify itself and its members. On Sept. 29, 1938, the city was the scene of the signing of the famous Munich Pact by England, France, Germany, and Italy, which ceded to Germany the Czechoslovakian Sudetenland. It was in the same beer cellar in 1939 that an attempt was made to assassinate hitler with a bomb, which went off shortly after Hitler left the building.

Munich's importance as a rail and industrial center brought numerous very heavy air raids upon the city in World War II, in which about half of the public buildings and industries were damaged or destroyed. In April 1945 the citizens rebelled against local Nazi leaders and surrendered the city to the Allies. At the end of the war the city was included in the United States zone of occupation.

Munich is one of the great cities of the world because of its rich typical rococo or Renaissance architecture, museums, parks, libraries, and technical institutions. Of especial note are the two streets Ludwigstrasse and Maximilianstrasse. On the former is located the famous Siegestor or Victory Gate, damaged in World War II but later restored. Old Munich is clustered around the ancient crossroads formed by Tal-, Kaufinger- and Neuhausstrasse, running east and west; and by Theatiner-, Wein- (Residenz-), Diener- and Sendlingerstrasse, running north and south. In the center of Munich is the town square (Marienplatz) in front of the new Rathaus, with it's beautiful golden statue of Mary, lifted high on a pillar over the square.

Of the city's many parks, most famous are the English Garden and the Court Garden. The thirteenth-century Frauenkirche, or Church of Our Lady, whose conspicuous twin towers serve as Munich's "trade-mark," was heavily damaged inside, but its famous towers survived intact. The Residenz, the splendid former palace of the Dukes of Bavaria, the seventeenth-century Church of the Theatines, and St. Michael's Church of the sixteenth century were heavily damaged during World War II but have been restored.

St. Anne's Church, one of the principal examples of high baroque in Munich, was completely destroyed in WW2, but has been rebuilt. Other noteworthy buildings include the fourteenth-century old town hall (Rathaus); the new town hall, a modern Gothic edifice; the twelfth-century Church of St. Peter, oldest church in Munich; and numerous other public buildings such as theaters, palaces, museums, monuments, and art galleries.

Munich possesses some of the finest museum and art collections and industrial exhibits in the world. Exhibits include the Old and New Pinakothek picture galleries; the Glyptothek, sculpture gallery; the House of German Art; the city library; the Deutches Museum; and the Schack Gallery. The famous University of Munich was founded in Ingolstadt in the fifteenth century and transferred to Munich in 1826. Other institutions include the Academy of Music, a technical college, the Bavarian State Library, the Bavarian State Opera, and several famous theaters.

Outside the town walls were built summer palaces (schloss). To celebrate the birth of their son in 1664, Elector Ferdinand Maria constructed the palace at Nymphenburg, west of Munich. Succeeding generations of rulers improved upon it, and expanded it for 300 years. Elector Maximilian II Emanuel wanted to build a palace to rival Versailles, so he began building Schleissheim in 1701 (completed in 1719). Neuschwanstein was the most ambitious project of Ludwig II is a few hours drive from Munich. It was begun by the "mad king" in 1861, and he continued working on it until his untimely death in 1886. Ludwig was Richard Wagner's greatest fan, and the interior of the palace is decorated with scenes from Wagner's operas.

Munich marks the point of crossing of east-west (Paris-Vienna) and north-south (Berlin-Rome) traffic; consequently it is a rail, highway, and airway center of first importance. Munich's international airport is new, and one of the finest in the world. Munich is connected by rail to all the important towns of Germany and Austria. There are spacious autobahn highways to France, to Austria and to Berlin. Such excellent transport facilities inevitably stimulate commerce and manufacturing. Products include beer (the world's finest and most renowned), woodwork and artistic handicraft articles, chemicals, leather goods, lithography, precision tools and machinery, electrical goods, and optical products.

The headquarters of BMW (Bavarian Motor Works) are in Munich. Munich's heavy industries were virtually destroyed by World War II bombings, but, in the postwar period, the city's industry has been restored. Munich is the seat of great banking houses, a wholesale market that has one of the biggest turnovers for fruit and vegetables from south and southeast Europe, and a vast slaughterhouse and stockyards.