The capital of Bavaria, in southern Germany, is a safe, compact city with friendly locals, a vibrant cultural life and great food and drink, writes Mal Rogers.
FOR SUCH a dramatic city, Munich lacks notably romantic origins. Handbags between two feudal rulers over tolls on the old salt road between Salzburg and Augsburg led to a community growing up on the banks of the Isar River, near a Benedictine friary. Locals called it the Site of the Little Monks, or Zu den München, and from these prosaic beginnings one of the world's great cities arose. Now the Bavarian capital is referred to as the world's most liveable metropolis: high culture, low crime and a general feeling of gemütlichkeit (German for craic, sort of) elevated it to the top slot.
Its charms once attracted Sligo-born Lola Montez. Christened Elizabeth Rosanna Gilbert, this 19th-century A-lister became celebrity mistress to King Ludwig I of Bavaria. Munich's main man turned his city into a German version of Florence.
Even more crucially, he licensed beer cellars - perhaps Lola's influence lay in there somewhere.
The arty and the avant-garde have always co-existed in Munich, alongside hearty eating and Bavarian beverages. Today some 70 art galleries, 40 museums, 56 theatres and opera houses, three large orchestras and more than 800 beer cellars cater for all cultural and culinary needs.
On Munich's streets, history clings to your clothes like burrs. You'll see where Hitler, Mussolini and Chamberlain signed the treaty that guaranteed "peace in our time". You'll also see the Führer's old stomping ground - and nobody could stomp better than him. Scars of that period are etched deep in the blood-stained architecture of the city.
Before the second World War, Munich was home to 11,000 Jews. All of them perished in the Holocaust - you can visit the Nazi regime's first concentration camp just down the road, in Dachau. Today the city is home once again to a thriving community of Jews. Munich Jewish Museum, beside a new synagogue on St-Jakobs-Platz, surveys the spectrum of the city's Hebrew history, culture and ultimate fate. No words can describe the experience. See for yourself.
In 1516 Munich passed Europe's first law governing food and beverage. These fledgling health-and-safety busybodies did nothing to dent Munich's desire for food on the hoof - you can get fat here just breathing the air. The city remains a centre of excellence for every type of takeaway, including the signature dish, leberkassemmeln, a calorie fest of corned beef, bacon, egg and onion baked in bread.
Munich is also one of the world's cream-cake superpowers. Café Glockenspiel, overlooking Marienplatz, is your essential destination. A crowd gathers here for kaffee und küchen, or coffee and cake, every day, as well as to watch the miniature tournament staged on the face of city hall's clock. The show is semi-interesting, but you'll soon return to the main business: the towering desserts slathered with cream.
Munich is home to the world's biggest festival of binge drinking, the annual Oktoberfest. Unofficial mini-drinking festivals can be staged throughout the remaining months of the year in any of several hundred beer cellars, sleek bars or sophisticated clubs.
As you sip your beer - brewed in one of the city's seven breweries, of which tours are available - you might reflect on the city's share of troubled times. It's hard not to marvel at the way the great mincing machine of Central European history seems to have enhanced modern Munich rather than detracted from it: Baroque churches, rococo spires and gothic domes, cobbled streets and trams rattling along elegant boulevards - you'll be lucky not to wilt under the undiluted charm of it all.
The arts scene is vibrant, locals are friendly and courteous, and the city is compact and safe. Even if similarities between your own neck of the woods and Munich are minimal, you'll feel totally at home.
5 places to stay
Kempinski Hotel Vier. Jahreszeiten, Maximilian- strasse 17, 00-49- 89-21250, www.kempinski-vierjahres zeiten.com. Double rooms from €240. For the financially carefree, the five-star Kempinski is the way to go. One of the world's great hostelries, with sumptuous luxury that guarantees the clientele is more celeb than pleb.
Mandarin Oriental. Neuturmstrasse 1, 00-49-89-290980, www.mandarinoriental.com. If you're rich, on your honeymoon or wantonly extravagant, check in here for a deluxe double room at €495. Expensive, but it does include a free minibar. Next to the opera, so you may be dining with a diva. Deffo the place if you know your arias from your elbow.
Hotel Torbräu. Tal 41, 00-49-89-24234234, www.torbraeu.de. Doubles from €185, including breakfast. Top-drawer digs in Munich's oldest inn, five minutes from Marienplatz. The sort of place you arrive down for breakfast and say: "Oh no, not poached eggs Grand Duc again!"
Mona Lisa. Robert-Koch- Strasse 4, 00-49-89-21028380, www.hotelmonalisa.de. A small guest house in the heart of the city, with only seven rooms. Doubles €79 with breakfast.
Pension Am Siegestor. Akademiestrasse 5, 00-49-89- 399550, www.sigestor.com. Doubles from €65. Basic but serviceable guest house in the heart of lively Schwabing.
5 places to eat
Ratskeller. Marienplatz 8, 00-49-89-2199890, www.ratskeller.com. The plastic menu has photographs of the dishes. Usually a very bad omen, but not here: the meat dishes are exemplary, the seafood a delight. From bovine brilliance to hard-core prawn.
Tantris. Johann-Fichte- Strasse 7, 00-49-89-3619590, www.tantris.de. Munich's classiest restaurant is the proud bearer (in an understated, Teutonic sort of way) of two Michelin stars. A wine list as long as the Old Testament and fish so fresh they still look surprised.
Schmalznudel. Prälat-Zistl- Strasse 8, 00-49-89-268237. Specialising in the epic (and eponymous) schmalznudel, Bavaria's version of the doughnut. This delicacy goes well with a glass of Sekt, champagne's elegant cousin.
Bergwolf. Frauenhoferstr 17, 00-49-89-23259858. A temple to sausages, namely Currywurst. Hearty fodder. After midnight the bar and wooden tables get seriously crowded. Very hip crowd, or Schiki Mickis as they're called locally. Really.
Riva. Tal 44, 00-49-89- 220240. A favourite with Munich's pizza gourmets and guzzlers for years. Possibly the finest outside Napoli. You'll be shouting "Mamma mia!" at the first mouthful.
5 places to go
Any foodie worth their (freshly milled rock) salt will want to visit the farmers' market in the centre of town, the Viktualienmarkt. It has exotic fruits, sweet delicacies and sausages of every description. From best to wurst, as it were. The bad news is that the best time to get there is early morning (as in 5am), when the 140 stalls open.
Many visitors have wilted at the sheer opulence and splendour of the late baroque Asamkirche (Sendlingerstrasse 62, 00-49-89-23687989). Built by the Asam brothers in the mid-18th century, it has an interior whose decoration will leave you nodding in appreciation of a truism: there are three arts, namely painting, music, and ornamental pastry-making. Architecture is a subdivision of the latter.
Stadtmuseum. St-Jakobs- Platz 1, 00-49-89-233 22370, www.stadtmuseum-online.de. Based in the 15th-century royal stables on St-Jakobs-Platz, this offers a rundown of the history of the city. But there's much more. Even if you're the sort of person who gets museum blindness within 10 minutes, you'll find something to detain you here. From all the musical instruments to the film museum (renowned for its restorations), and not forgetting the fashion museum, this is the place to get your awe well and truly inspired.
Alte Pinakothek. Barer Strasse 27, 00-49-89-23805216, www.pinakothek.de) has one of Europe's most significant art collections. Botticelli and Bosch jostle for space with local boys Dürer and Altdorfer. A couple of Rubens's cherubs with pudgy faces give hope that sausages may be available in the afterlife. For a further brush with greatness, just across the street is the Neue Pinakothek, with European paintings from the 19th century (French impressionists, art nouveau and so on). Completing the trio of galleries in the immediate neighbourhood is the Pinakothek Modern, with 20th- and 21st-century paintings.
Schloss Nymphenburg. Eingang 19, 00-49-89-179080, www.schloesser.bayern.de. Built for Munich's grosse und güte, this is where our Lola would entertain her admirers with exotic dances. You can do something similar (nobody will object) or just lie back and admire the rococo splendour of the palace and the extravagance of the gardens - perfect for gentle walks and serious quaffing, as they have a handy beer garden. Who would have thought the Germans could be so efficient?
Check out
Frauenkirche. Frauenplatz 1, 00-49-892900820. The Cathedral of Our Blessed Lady is Munich's most recognisable landmark, with its onion domes atop each tower. The reward for climbing the south tower: blistering views of the Alps, 100km away. Enough to make atheists scratch their heads.
Hit the shops
A black belt in shopping will serve you well in the boutiques of Maximilianstrasse. For bling to bric-a-brac, head for Schwabing, a former bohemian quarter. No need for shelf denial here.
Hot spot
Baader Cafe. Baaderstrasse 47, 00-49-89-2010638. The atmosphere seems guaranteed to produce interesting liaisons. Open until 2am, it is, to use that useful cliche, something of an institution. An ideal place to linger over an Italian salad, an Austrian wine or a Munich beer, and watch Munich's socialites of all ages drift by.
A good night out
Munich's youthful glitterati head for the Kultfabrik/ Optimolwerk clubland, reputedly Europe's biggest disco complex. The area has given Munich the title of European capital of disco, with plenty of outlets for people who wear sunglasses at night.
To avoid
The Hofbräuhaus, Platzl 9, may be the world's most famous beer hall, with equally famous oompah bands, but no local would go there without threat of a shameful secret from their past being brought to public attention. Avoid at all costs.
Aer Lingus (www.aerlingus. com) flies to Munich twice a day from Dublin and three times a week from Cork.