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Few European cities carry their identity as confidently as Munich. The Bavarian capital sits at the northern edge of the Alps, close enough that the mountains appear on the horizon on clear days, and the city has always drawn a kind of energy from that proximity, a sense that grandeur is simply part of the landscape. The old centre, anchored by the Marienplatz and its neo-Gothic Rathaus, gives way to broad boulevards, royal parks, and a sequence of world-class museums that reflect centuries of Wittelsbach patronage. This was a court city long before it became a modern metropolis, and the architecture still makes that argument.

The Altstadt rewards slow exploration on foot. The twin onion domes of the Frauenkirche have oriented Münchners for five hundred years, and the covered market stalls of the Viktualienmarkt have been trading since 1807. North of the centre, the Maxvorstadt district holds one of the densest concentrations of art in the German-speaking world: the Pinakothek museums sit within walking distance of each other, and a private tour of the Alte Pinakothek, which houses Rubens, Dürer, and Raphael among its permanent holdings, offers a very different pace from the self-guided crowds. Schwabing, just beyond, has the relaxed character of a university quarter, its cafes and bookshops spilling onto streets that once attracted Kandinsky and Rilke.