Bavaria · Old Town
Munich
A self-guided walking tour of the Munich Old Town, every street in two days.
Every street on the menu.
Every street in the Old Town of Munich is a line of dots you collect by walking it. I have been lying in one of them for six hundred years and I am still not finished.
At a glance
Plan your walk.
- Distance
- 31.4 km
- Time
- about 9 hours
- Streets
- 132
- Steps
- 5 streets with steps
- Start point
- Frauenkirche
- Phone needed while walking
- no
- Works offline
- yes
- Expires
- never
The Old Town
Every street, drawn.
Every lane inside that line is a course. The circles are fruit.
Landmarks
What I would eat first.
Landmarks are fruit. The bigger the sight, the bigger the bonus.
Frauenkirche 1,500 points
Big, blunt and made of brick, and you can see it from most of my lanes. That was the point of building it that way. Inside, the trick is not to look up first. Look down at what is under your feet just after you come in from the square, and give it a moment.
Marienplatz 500 points
The middle of everything, and the place all my lanes lean towards. Do not just cross it. Stand still, let your eyes climb the long front up into the tower, and catch the right minute. Then something up there gets going.
Theatinerkirche St. Kajetan 500 points
You notice the colour before anything else. It is the yellow one at the top of the shopping street, with two slim fronts and a dome behind them, and the yellow is no accident. If it is open, go in: everything in there is white, and it is the loudest white I know.
Viktualienmarkt 500 points
A whole square given over to selling food, which is why I take it personally. Everything is arranged in a ring, and the good part is whatever the ring is arranged around. This is also the one spot in the Old Town where sitting down is part of the plan.
Alter Hof 250 points
Where the rulers first set up house in town, one turn off the busy lanes, and almost nobody walks in. A quiet yard, a crooked oriel stuck on a corner, walls that have heard things. Go in and read what is fixed to the wall.
Isartor 250 points
The eastern gate, at the far end of the wide old street that runs towards the river. Come at it from within and watch it grow: a squat middle block, a walled forecourt, two slim ones holding the corners. And somebody with a very particular sense of humour has moved in upstairs. I am not telling you who.
little ART - Münchner Künstlerhaus 250 points
It sits at the north-west edge, where the ring bends, and looks like a Renaissance town hall that took a wrong turning. Somebody built it as a clubhouse for one particular crowd, and the scrolled gable says loudly which one. There is a courtyard behind it too.
Sendlinger Tor 250 points
The southern gate. Traffic goes around it and you still walk straight under the arch, which is my favourite kind of leftover. Look up at what flanks the opening before you pass. There is arithmetic hiding up there.
Eating
Actual food.
Most of what you will eat here started as somebody's bad morning. A landlord ran out of the right casings in 1857 and boiled his sausages instead. A baker reached for the wrong bucket in 1839 and pulled out the first lye pretzel. An elector's butcher turned up from Mannheim in 1778 and improvised a loaf of meat. Munich was a capital with clerks, so every accident got a date written down beside it.
Meat and fish
Münchner Weißwurst
Veal and pork, parsley, lemon and mace, in a skin you leave on the plate. The old rule says it must not live to hear the noon bell, because the meat was once sold raw and turned fast. A sausage that clocks off at twelve.
Do not eat the skin. Slit it along its length, or suck the sausage out of it. Both count as correct here.
Sources: GenussErbe Bayern, München Tourismus
Bayerischer Leberkäse
Beef and pork ground fine, baked in a bread tin, cut thick and eaten hot with sweet mustard. There is no liver in the Bavarian one and never was. Outside Bavaria they put the liver in, which I consider a different animal altogether.
Ask for the Scherzel, the crisp end slice. Ask early, because a loaf only has two of them.
Sources: GenussErbe Bayern
Münchner Kronfleisch
Beef diaphragm, boiled, eaten between meals with freshly grated horseradish, chives, dark bread and gherkins. In the pot it curls up into a crown, and that is the whole of the name. The offal kitchen it belongs to has nearly gone from the city, so finding it is half the meal.
Ask in the old houses down the Tal. This is a butcher's cut and the tourist menus dropped it long ago.
Sources: GenussErbe Bayern, München Tourismus, München-Lese
Vegetarian
Obazda
Ripe soft cheese mashed with butter, paprika and salt, and by the rules at least half of it has to be cheese. It exists because Camembert goes soft faster than a kitchen can sell it. Protected across the EU since June 2015, which is a great deal of paperwork for a rescue operation.
Sources: GenussErbe Bayern
Prinzregententorte
Sponge and chocolate cream in alternating layers, each one half a centimetre thick. The eight layers stood for Bavaria's eight districts at the time. One district left Bavaria after the war, so what reaches you is sometimes a map with seven.
Count the layers before you start. Seven and eight both turn up, and both are honest.
Münchner Apfelstrudel
Peeled apples, cream, butter and good spices, wrapped in dough pulled by hand until it is almost see through. It set out as Turkish baklava, was rebuilt in Vienna, and then rebuilt again here. Munich put its name on the third draft.
Sources: GenussErbe Bayern
Vegan
Brezn mit süßem Senf
A lye pretzel, thin armed and dark, with the sweet mustard this city built to go beside it. The mustard came out of a workshop on Kaufingerstraße, and the sugar and vinegar went in during 1854 and never came back out. Two things off a field, and together they are lunch.
Ask the bakery about the fat in the dough. The rules allow one and a half to four percent and never say which kind.
Sources: GenussErbe Bayern
Münchner Mundsemmel
A big round wheat roll with a cross stamped into the top, milled from the court bakery's better flour. The city banned it in 1824 for breaking the price rules and handed it back in 1825 because people would not stop asking. A bread roll that outlasted an ordinance.
Buy it in the morning. The crust holds for four to six hours, and the crust is the whole point.
Sources: GenussErbe Bayern
Bayerischer Radi
A white radish, cut raw and thin, with nothing on it but salt. It has sat next to the pretzel on Bavarian tables the entire time, quietly being plant food. Nobody had to invent it, which after the rest of this list is a rest.
Sources: GenussErbe Bayern
Late breakfast
Lea Zapf Marktpatisserie come for the one thing: the Luftikus
Viktualienmarkt
A pastry stall in the Viktualienmarkt, and the Luftikus has grown into its classic. It is the house's own take on the Windbeutel, the German cream puff. Choux pastry with a crunchy crust on top and a filling that changes with the season. The eggs come from Hof Gut Hollern in Eching, the flour from the Hofbräuhaus-Kunstmühle. Luftikus means a flighty sort, all air. So a second one hardly counts.
- Monclosed
- Tue08:00–17:00
- Wed08:00–17:00
- Thu08:00–17:00
- Fri08:00–17:00
- Sat10:30–17:00
- Sunclosed
Come early. The stall shuts at five, or sooner once the last piece is sold, and stays shut on Sundays and Mondays.
Sources: Der Feinschmecker, Geheimtipp München
Ooh Baby I Like It Raw where locals go
Rumfordstraße 39
A small café on Rumfordstraße, near the Isartor, done up in a playful vintage look. Breakfast here is avocado bread, bagels, eggs, and cake baked fresh every day. The name says raw. The omelette says otherwise.
Its opening hours differ from one listing to the next. Check the door or its own site before you plan a late breakfast.
Sources: Mit Vergnügen München, The Golden Bun, MIA SAN FOODIES
Afternoon coffee
sweet spot kaffee Viktualienmarkt come for the one thing: the coffee that is never bitter
Heiliggeiststraße 1
A small specialty coffee bar on Heiliggeiststraße, a few steps off the market. The cup comes out fruity and light one time, surprisingly sweet the next, and never bitter, because nobody roasted these beans until they burnt. Sweet enough that the sugar stays in the bowl.
- Mon08:00–19:00
- Tue08:00–19:00
- Wed08:00–19:00
- Thu08:00–19:00
- Fri08:00–19:00
- Sat09:00–18:00
- Sunclosed
Ask which beans are on today. If you like the cup, the shelf sells the bag.
Sources: European Coffee Trip, Mit Vergnügen München
Kaffeerösterei Viktualienmarkt where locals go
Viktualienmarkt
A coffee stall inside the Viktualienmarkt, and most of the people standing at it are regulars. The house roasts its own beans by hand in a drum roaster, and has since 2014. The beans tumble in the drum until they go brown. Cooking by rolling. Finally a method I understand.
- Mon08:00–18:00
- Tue08:00–18:00
- Wed08:00–18:00
- Thu08:00–18:00
- Fri08:00–18:00
- Sat08:00–18:00
- Sunclosed
Come on a weekday or a Saturday. It shuts on Sundays and public holidays.
Sources: IN München, Mit Vergnügen München
Dinner
Prinz Myshkin the old one
Hackenstraße 2
A vegetarian kitchen in the Hackenstraße, at this address for more than thirty years. You order à la carte in a cosy room under ceilings several metres high. Not one piece of meat in all that time, and the vegetables are holding out fine.
- Mon11:00–23:00
- Tue11:00–23:00
- Wed11:00–23:00
- Thu11:00–23:00
- Fri11:00–23:00
- Sat11:00–23:00
- Sun11:00–23:00
Order by half past nine. Warm food stops then, well before the door closes.
Sources: Falstaff, Abendzeitung München
Andy's Krablergarten where locals go
Thalkirchner Straße 2
A Bavarian kitchen in a courtyard at Sendlinger Tor, on Thalkirchner Straße. Not much to see from the street. Behind it, the place turns cosy and very Bavarian. The schnitzel and the Cordon Bleu top the menu, and the portions come big. Finally, a kitchen that cooks to my appetite.
- Mon12:00–23:30
- Tue12:00–23:30
- Wed12:00–23:30
- Thu12:00–23:30
- Fri12:00–23:30
- Sat12:00–23:30
- Sun12:00–23:30
Bring cash and just turn up. It takes no cards and no reservations, and the hot kitchen stops at ten in the evening.
Sources: Leberkassemmel und mehr
Checked 26 September 2026.
With kids
Short legs, big appetite.
The streets here are full of dots to collect, and a child on a hunt forgets to be tired. Here is a short loop for the smallest walkers.
- The loop
- Frauenkirche, Marienplatz, Viktualienmarkt, Isartor, Alter Hof, and back to the start
- Distance
- 2.0 km
- Time
- about 40 minutes of walking at a child's pace (3 km/h)
- Steps
- no streets with steps on the loop
- Playgrounds
- 1 near the loop
- Public toilets
- 6 near the loop, 2 with a changing table
- Drinking water
- 1 near the loop
- Ice cream
- 9 near the loop
Near the loop means within 150 m of it, counted from OpenStreetMap, © OpenStreetMap contributors.
Name origin
Why it is called Munich.
München means at the monks. The name is built on munich, the medieval word for a monk, and the town has read it that way since the Middle Ages: the oldest seal it still has, from 1239, is a monk's head under a hood. So a city of this size is named after the quiet neighbours who got here first. I was here even earlier, and nobody named anything after me.
Sources: stadt.muenchen.de; hdbg.eu
Why here
Somebody stood here and decided.
No rock, no harbour, no bend in a river. Munich is here because of a crossing, and the crossing is the one thing this walk does not contain. The bishops of Freising had their Isar bridge a few miles downstream at Oberföhring. In 1156 Henry the Lion put up his own at Munichen, and the salt on its way from Salzburg to Augsburg moved over to it. Everything else grew up around that salt. A whole city built on seasoning: I understand it completely. The river runs just past your eastern edge, where the Ludwigsbrücke stands today, and tablets from the 1890s on its west side claim the spot for that first bridge. Your edge follows the old line of the town defences, which is why it draws such a tidy ring. What you do get is the road to the river: the Tal runs east to the Isartor, whose address is Tal 50.
Sources: www.geodaten.bayern.de p. 18; www.mittelalter-lexikon.de; www.geodaten.bayern.de p. 528; stadtgeschichte-muenchen.de; www.geodaten.bayern.de p. 813
Why then
When the first stone went down.
1158 is the official year, and it comes out of a quarrel. The place turns up in writing for the first time as forum apud Munichen, the market at Munichen, in a settlement between the Bishop of Freising and Henry the Lion, argued out in front of the emperor and the imperial diet at Augsburg. So this city's birth certificate is somebody else's paperwork about a bridge. Nothing gets written down until there is money on the table.
Who ruled
Everyone who thought they owned this.
I outlasted all of them. It is the one thing I am good at.
- 1158–1180
Henry the Lion, Duke of Saxony and Bavaria, who is on this page mostly because he built the bridge and pulled the salt onto it. In 1180 Bavaria went to another family, and the market he had started carried on without him. That is the usual order of things. The street outlasts the man who put it there.
- 1180–1918
The Wittelsbachs, for seven hundred and thirty-eight years: dukes, then electors, then kings. From 1255 the place stopped being only a market and was built up as a ruler's seat, and in 1806 it woke up as the royal capital of a brand new kingdom. One family, one town, longer than most countries have been countries. I did not move in that time either, but nobody built me a Residenz.
Sources: stadt.muenchen.de
- 1918–
In 1918 Kurt Eisner called for the end of the monarchy, and got it: Bavaria was proclaimed a republic, and the name that stuck in the end was Freistaat Bayern. After seven centuries of one family, the town carried on without a crown. The rulers on this page kept changing their titles. The paving did not.
Sources: stadt.muenchen.de
The emblem
What the shield means.
A monk on a silver field: black habit with a gold hem, red shoes, a red book in the left hand, the right hand raised to swear or to bless. The seals of 1239 and 1268 already show a hooded monk's head, and since 1304 the monk has been the arms. The book is read as the town's oath book, or as its book of law, kept as a red-bound manuscript of 1365; some read it as a gospel book. In 1808 King Max I Joseph gave the city arms with a capital M instead. The citizens protested, and in 1818 a monk's head came back. Over the 18th and 19th centuries he was drawn cuter and cuter, and the name Münchner Kindl turns up in 1727. Nobody has ever tried to replace me with a letter. I would taste the letter first.
Sources: hdbg.eu
Emblem: Public domain — official coat of arms (Wikimedia Commons)
Three facts
Three things I know about this place.
The Old Town comes in four quarters: Graggenau in the north-east, Kreuzviertel in the north-west, Hackenviertel in the south-west, Angerviertel in the south-east. Each one still has a look of its own, so the walk changes flavour four times without ever leaving the ring. The Tal was a fifth quarter of its own for a while, until, some time after the middle of the 15th century at the latest, the neighbours on either side had split it between them.
Sources: www.geodaten.bayern.de p. 18
The plots here run extremely deep, so people cut ways straight through the blocks: a door on one street, daylight on the next. The habit shaped the whole town and was handed down to today as passages. Half of them you would walk past without a glance. A door with a street on both sides is my favourite kind of sandwich. Go through.
Sources: www.geodaten.bayern.de p. 18
The ground plan under your feet is the old one, and it survived on purpose. After the Second World War the council decided early to put the Old Town back essentially as it had looked, filling the gaps and keeping the old plot lines. No other big city in West Germany kept so large a historic area through its rebuilding. Then in 1972 the two streets across the middle, Neuhauser Straße and Kaufingerstraße, were handed over to people on foot. Somebody served me a main course with the traffic taken off it.
Sources: www.geodaten.bayern.de p. 19; www.geodaten.bayern.de p. 21; stadt.muenchen.de
Street words
What the names on the signs mean.
- Passage
- A way through a block: in from one street, out on the next, sometimes roofed, sometimes just a yard with two openings. The deep old plots made them, and Munich kept them.
- Hof
- A courtyard, and a whole address by itself. Schäfflerhof, Prunkhof, Königsbauhof: an opening in a facade, a yard behind it, and most people walking past the opening.
- Tal
- Not a valley you would ever notice. It is the wide old street running east towards the river, and for a while it was a quarter of its own rather than part of anybody else's.
- Anger
- The common green a village kept for its animals. Oberanger and Unterer Anger remember one that stopped being green a very long time ago.
- Markt
- What was sold there, in one word. Rindermarkt, Roßmarkt: the goods used to arrive on their own legs, which is more than can be said for the goods today.
The size of it
Walk it in a day: Munich in numbers.
Counted from the streets in the level itself, not from a guidebook.
- 132streets
- 1,631dots
- 24.9km of street
- 31.4km on foot
- 9.0hours at a stroll
Nearby
Old Towns close to this one.
The game
Your first city is free.
Cobble Gobble is a walking game for iPhone. Claim any city as your free one. Every other city is a one-time purchase you keep for good, Family Sharing included, and a city you own plays fully offline.