10 Best Sights in Munich, Germany

Although the museum places emphasis on Bavarian cultural history, it has art and artifacts of international importance and regular exhibitions that attract worldwide attention. The museum is a journey through time, principally from the early Middle Ages to the 20th century, with medieval and Renaissance wood carvings, works by the great Renaissance sculptor Tilman Riemenschneider, tapestries, arms and armor, a unique collection of Christmas crèches (the Krippenschau), Bavarian and German folk art, and a significant Jugendstil (art nouveau) collection.

To get a sense of the town's history, visit the Bezirksmuseum (district museum), which displays historical artifacts, furniture, and traditional costumes from Dachau and its surroundings.

This quirky museum is in the enormous former St. Augustus Church, and it contains a large collection of fishhooks, taxidermy animals (including a 6½-foot-tall brown bear and a grizzly from Alaska), and a 12,000-year-old megaloceros (giant deer) skeleton. You'll even find the Wolpertinger, a mythical creature with body parts of various animals. There are also rotating special exhibitions exploring native wildlife, as well as the history of hunting and fishing.

The striking Jewish Center at St.-Jakobs-Platz has transformed a formerly sleepy area into an elegant, busy modern square. The buildings signify the return of the Jewish community to Munich's City Center, six decades after the end of the Third Reich. The center includes a museum focusing on Jewish history in Munich and the impressive Ohel Jakob Synagogue, with its rough slabs topped by a lattice-like cover, manifesting a thought-provoking sense of permanence. The third building is a community center, which includes the kosher Einstein restaurant ( 089/2024–00332). 

The castle of Possenhofen, home of Ludwig's favorite cousin, Sissi, stands on the western shore, practically opposite Berg. Local lore says they used to send affectionate messages across the lake to each other. Sissi married the Austrian emperor Franz Joseph I, but spent more than 20 summers in the lakeside castle. The inside of the castle cannot be visited, but there is a nice park around it, and you can learn more about Sissi at the Kaiserin Elisabeth Museum (Sissi-Museum), set in the historical Possenhofen railway station (yards from S-bahn Possenhofen).

Bavaria's greatest monarch, Ludwig I, was obsessed with antiquity, and the impressive buildings designed by Leo von Klenze that line this elegant square bear testament to that. Two temple-like structures face each other, the Staatliche Antikensammlungen (an acclaimed collection of Greek and Roman antiquities) and the Glyptothek (a fine collection of Greek and Roman statues). After WWII, Munich authorities restored the park and the broad green lawns in front of the museums attract students and tourists in the warmer months for concerts, films, and other events. This area became the national center of the Nazi Party in the 1930s and '40s. Destroyed in the war, the new Munich Documentation Centre for the History of National Socialism (NS-Dokumentationszentrum) opened in 2015 at Max-Mannheimer-Platz 1. On Arcisstrasse 12 is the Nazi-era building (now a music school) where in 1938 Britain's prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, infamously thought he had negotiated "peace in our time" with Hitler.

This museum is as eclectic inside as the architecture is outside. The buildings facing St.-Jakobs-Platz date to the 15th century, though they were destroyed in WWII and rebuilt. It houses the fabulous Typical Munich! exhibition, charting a riotous history few other cities can match: royal capital, brewery center, capital of art and classical music, and now wealthy, high-tech, and cultural center par excellence. There is also a separate, permanent exhibition dealing with the city's Nazi past. The museum is home to a puppet theater, a film museum showing rarely screened movies, and numerous photo and other temporary exhibitions. Check out the museum shop, servus.heimat, with the great and good of Munich kitsch and souvenirs. 

Founded in 1862, this museum houses an enormous quantity of ethnographic articles from around the world, including arts, crafts, photographs, and library material. The extensive museum takes a peek into non-European cultures from Africa, America, Asia, Australia, the Near and Middle East, and the South Seas to see how they differ (or not) from Europe with both permanent displays and special exhibits.

More than 300,000 coins, banknotes, medals, and precious stones, some 5,000 years old, are among the treasures of the Bavarian State Coin Collection.

Various Bavarian rulers were fascinated with the ancient world and in the 19th century accumulated huge quantities of significant Egyptian treasures, part of which make up the Staatliche Sammlung Ägyptischer Kunst. The collection is housed in an impressive modern building in Munich's superb Kunstareal.