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| Famous people | Munich facts | Cool links | One day outside Munich | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Is Munich the quintessential German city? It might be, with its location in the heart of Bavaria, and being the gateway to the Alps, the home to such brand names as BMW, the football club Bayern, and that particularly Bavarian feast of Oktoberfest.
The city's name comes from the German word Munichen or "monk settlement" for it was the Benedictine friars that settled in the valley of the Isar river in the 8th century Since that time, Munich has grown into the third-largest German city with 1.2 million people. Munich's history is full of twists and turns, reflecting the complicated past of the German lands. A ducal residence at first, Munich became a fully-fledged capital of Bavaria in 1503, only 14 years before Martin Luter's Reformation began in Germany. Munich, however, as well as the whole Duchy of Bavaria, remained one of the main strongholds against Reformation, sticking to its Catholic traditions. At the turn of 18th and 19th centuries, Munich enjoyed a status of the capital city of the Kingdom of Bavaria. Its first king, Max Joseph started the tradition of Oktoberfest in 1810, though one must admit that the festival has ventured much away from its royal origins. Throughout the 19th century the city flourished, the well-preserved architecture from that period being one of its most recommended sightseeing points. The reign of Bavaria's last king, Ludwig II, proved a swan song for the kingdom, though not for the city itself. As Munich and Bavaria became part of the freshly unified German state in 1871, the city quickly embraced the new and lively cultural trends that pervaded across Europe at the turn of 19th and 20th centuries. Writers like Mann or Ibsen, artists like Kandinsky or Klee, all lived there. But Munich also was where Adolph Hitler rose to importance in 1920s and also where democratic Europe succumbed, when Britain's Neville Chamberlain signed the infamous Munich treaty, sealing the fate of Czechoslovakia and opening gates for Hitler's further invasions. After the war, Munich swiftly recovered from the heavy damage inflicted on it by the Allied forces. It now stands up to par with its cultural traditions of Mann and Kandinsky and is one of Germany's centres for industry, culture, entertainment, and sports - for it's not only Bayern Munich that is the sporting symbol of the city (and to many, of Germany as a whole). In 1972, the memorable ? for a variety of reasons, including non-sporting ones -- Olympic Games took place there. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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There is more than
Munich
hotels to see on our website. Check other cities in
Germany
:
Berlin hotels | accommodation in Frankfurt | hotels in Munich
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