Absolute München

Munich is somewhat schizophrenic - one minute an affluent sophisticate with more theatres than in any other part of Germany, gracious architecture, ridiculously well-educated inhabitants (1 out of 5 is a graduate or scholar), and pots of money; the next throwing caution to the wind and letting its hair down in Oktoberfest (and indeed all-year-round-fest).

It has cast off the more sinister elements of its recent history (though that's not to say that they've been swept under the carpet -- you only have to visit Dachau to see that) and much of the fun of the region comes from the somewhat more distant past and the exploits of the Bavarian royals and their successors, the Wittelbachs; King Ludwig I and his son, Maximillian, and Ludwig II, all spent piles of their subjects' cash on the fairy-tale castles and palaces that you can visit today.

Marienplatz is the city centre, site of the neo-Gothic Neues Rathaus (built between 1867-1909 to supersede the (real Gothic) Altes Rathaus).

Quick Tips:

From here, wander to Hofbrauhaus (literally "court brewery") or St Peter's, whose foundations date from 1169.

Don't miss the 6 quirky museums, all housed under one roof at the Zentrum fur Aussergewohnliche Museen, each dedicated to something unusual -- corkscrews, chamber pots...). There's more highbrow, conventional art in the museum quarter -- the Alte and Neue Pinaothek, Glypothek, Staatliche Antikensammlungen, Lenbachhaus and Bayerisches Nationalmuseum must satisfy even the most voracious art lover, after which you'll well justified to head to the Englischer Garten for al fresco R&R, or the Olympic Stadium, host to the 1972 Games (from the needle tower, catch a glimpse -- through binoculars! -- of a Bayern Munchen match).

For high living, don't miss Nymphenburg (a 1662 Rococo palace, reminiscent of Versailles) for the lavish decor and lovely grounds; at the other end of the spectrum, the excellent museum/memorial at the former site of Dachau concentration camp is a chilling excursion.

Numerous other museums and glorious churches are scattered round the city, plus you can invest in some of the most extraordinarily revolting souvenirs before visiting as many beer cellars and gardens as you could possibly desire.

Best Way To Get Around:

The good news then is that the city is compact and easily manageable on foot or by a combination of streetcar trams and underground ("U-bahn") or suburban line trains ("S-bahn"). On arrival at spanking-new Franz Josef Airport, if you're a group of 2-5 people, buy a "Partner-Tageskarte Gesamtnetz" (Ringe -- ie zones -- 1-16 for €16; for subseqent inner-city journeys, get a similar daily ticket probably limited to ringe 1-6, for €9.50); the former will both get you into town (line S8 on the S-bahn goes to the main station -- "Hauptbahnhof" -- on the west side of the city) and then get you around everywhere in town until validity expires at 6am next morning. (Don't bother with the Lufthansa airport bus as it costs about €9pp in comparison). The quiet, clean public transport system is a testament to German technology and means you don't even need to think about driving (ironic given that it's the home of the BMW).

The managers of the Hotel Monaco obviously want you to feel you're in heaven -- the place does not just have a cherub theme but is in fact a veritable world of cherubs. They're in pastel gilt-framed pictures, terracotta statuettes on windowsills, bronze miniatures hanging from light fitments.

It may not be heaven as such, but for €66 for a small-ish but clean double room with en suite shower/cable TV etc., you can't really knock it. The hotel is located on Schillerstrasse, just along from the station, cheek by jowl with lots of other bargain-basement hotels (as well as less classy establishments like strip joints et al). Also note that, despite being on the fifth floor (there's a small lift, big enough for 4 people) and on a side street, our bedroom was quite noisy (from passers-by rather than traffic) so you might want to pack earplugs.

Reception is small but well-manned (the usual brochures and pamphlets for walking tours/guided trips to Dachau etc.), with a bell to ring for attention and a small crystal bowl of fruit sweets and newspapers if you have to wait. The clientele for the small number of rooms (also note -- different sizes = different prices, so ask if you're on a budget) is of varying ages (couples and families with older children) and international -- Italians, Spaniards, French, Brits.The owners are duly multilingual and can lend you a German/English dictionary if you're practising your German.

The breakfast room is similarly adorned with cherubs, supplemented with dried/silk flowers but don't be distracted -- the buffet break is pretty good: individual pots of coffee/tea are brought to your table, then it's a choice of 4 cereals, yoghurts, tinned fruit salad, an excellent variety of breads and nutty/sesame-seedy rolls, a mini cheese-board and plates of sausage and ham, plus the usual jams and sweet things and a good (apparently) chocolate cake (if that's your thing at 8am).

Website - http://www.hotel-monaco.de or email info@hotel-monaco.de .

In 1662, the Bavarian Wittelsbach family decided to build a castle all their own, and they proceeded to add outhouses and extra wings until the early 1900s. The result is a grand palace of a place, approached (by tram to the eponymous stop on line 12) via a long gravel drive which splits into two to encircle a lake of ducks, geese and swans and then a manicured lawn with gushing fountain, in front of the long, symmetrical white building with a sweeping central stone staircase -- all with a distinctly Versailles-esque feeling -- right down to the larger-than-life golden crowns atop the corners of the staircase.

You can buy a variety of ticket combinations -- either the palace itself (including the "Gallery of Beauties," a collection of 36 portraits of King Ludwig I's alleged mistresses, or those who caught his eye and favours, from princesses to a cobbler's daughter) for €3.50, or the hunting lodge (Amelienburg), plus the bathing house (Badenburg) and pavilions (Magdalenenklause and Pagodenburg) for an additional €3.50 (or separate entry to each is about €1-2). The palace's quite beautiful grounds are freely accessible until about dusk, and there is a coffeehouse/snack bar to the right of the grounds (Palmen Cafe) for a rest, coffee, and cake or ice cream.

As you enter the main palace by climbing the stone stairs, the first room is perhaps the most overpowering and striking -- gleaming white walls with grand windows through arches and pillars, crystal chandeliers, and a vast, breathtaking Zimmermann ceiling fresco depicting the gods (Flora, Venus, Diana, Apollo, Mercury, Minerva, Bacchus...); the room is a Rococo-fest of mirrors and gilt-framed pictures, looking right through to the gardens at the rear. Fortunately, there are benches for you to sit and wonder at the opulence and magnificence of the whole affair.

From here, to the left is the wing where the lady of the house lived, and to the right, her husband, including bedrooms, salons and receiving rooms, dining rooms et al, all with gloriously silk-damask walls, carved furniture, canopied beds, paintings (both portrait and some very fine period landscapes) and tapestries, velvet curtains. There are mini-exhibitions of porcelain and a coachhouse containing Ludwig's sleighs and carriages.

Beyond the palace, the Amelienburg is a sumptuous hunting lodge, even containing a mini-Hall of Mirrors; the Magdalenenklause (1728), a ruined hermitage retreat, complete with grotto; the Pagodenburg (1719), a chinoiserie party house; the Badenburg (1721), a Baroque bathing house with pool (with underwater benches).

You can hire audio sets for tours €3 or buy mini-guidebooks for 2.50 as a lasting souvenir. Photography is allowed without flash.

20km north of Munich is the sobering memorial museum, erected after WWII, on the site of the notorious Nazi concentration camp. Of an estimated 200,000 "undesirables" eventually imprisoned throughout the camp's 12 year operation, some 32,000 lost their lives. Almost as soon as Hitler became Chancellor in 1933, he passed "Protective Custody" legislation which allowed his SS soldiers to round up and incarcerate political opponents, without recourse to the law.

You enter past original white watchtowers, dotted along the barbed wire perimeter fence. These days, the site is a bleak, windswept expanse of gravel and concrete -- allied soldiers razed the prisoners' huts to the ground after liberation in April 1945 but one has been reconstructed and the layout of the balance is picked out in gravel on the ground. Each hut was originally designed to accommodate 208 prisoners but, by 1938, up to 1600 people were crammed into each -- original bunks were redesigned into 3-tiered shelves, stacked to the ceilings like coffins; no wonder disease spread.

Numerous placards give information and contemporaneous photos for a genuine impression of how things looked before and after liberation on 29.4.1945. Dachau doesn't shy from the brutality and horror of the regime -- pre-1945 photos depict gunned down prisoners whose escape attempts has just failed. Even on a blue-skied day, I felt a chill suddenly to realise that the poplars pictured lining the path between the huts, with cadaverous figures walking alongside, are still swaying there today, right next to me.

Beyond the barracks are memorials -- a Jewish memorial of Israel, a Christian chapel of Christ's agony, a Russian Orthodox chapel of Reconciliation. A remembrance bell is rung every day at 3pm. Beyond the Russian chapel along a formerly blocked path lies the medical unit, punishment block and crematorium. Though apparently never a systematic extermination camp like Auschwitz or Treblinka -- survivors have testified that the gas chamber, disguised as a shower room, was never used -- the crematoria saw a lot of use. The tell-tale tall square chimney of "Barrack X" makes you shuddder : 10,000s died -- their corpses burnt to hide their sheer numbers -- of diseases and malnutrition, shot by SS guards or killed in medical "experiments".

The infamous entrance gate has been pulled down but the haunting lie "Arbeit macht Frei" (work brings freedom) is reproduced on the medical block gateway. The old kitchen/laundry is now an excellent museum, detailing with photographs, films and documents Germany's sad state after the WWI defeat, the 1930s depression and Nazi propaganda which led to Hitler's rise, and the passage of WWII. It's also an auditorium for a harrowing documentary film. Outside is the International Memorial dating from 1968 - a stylised representation of prisoners behind barbed wire.

Take S-bahn 2 to Dachau station for a 722 bus to drop you just short of the camp (€1 each way; depart every c20 mins). Entrance is free; informative audio guide-sets are €2.50; allow minimum 4 hours including travelling.

South of St Peter's, east of the Victualenmarkt is the Zentrum fur Aussergewohnliche Museen ("ZAM" -- literally centre for out-of-the-ordinary museums). Under one roof are packed 6 (it used to be 7 but the padlock museum appears to be closed down) broom-cupboard sized rooms, showcasing a bizarre mix of the perfectly ordinary, everyday (of every conceivable make and design) to the more esoteric through to the quite surreal.

To get you in the appropriately quirky mood, start off with an assortment of corkscrews; then it's into chamber-pots of all shapes, sizes and eras (Roman with flat handles, Chinese with lids, Royal Doulton and even art deco); followed by the Bourdalou Museum -- porcelain pots which look for all the world like gravy boats but were apparently for discreet use by courtly ladies in waiting under their wide skirts when no toilet-breaks were permitted.

Kids are torn between the Easter bunny and pedal car museums -- with models from the 1880s right up to date; there are mini-sized bugattis and buicks, and a Noddy car.

The sixth and last museum is one for the historians or those who are a sucker for a hard-luck story. It's something of a shrine, dedicated to and charting the life of Elizabeth, Duchess of Austria, who was known (and indeed still is) as Sisi. She's Bavaria's own precursor to the Princess of Wales -- plain child grows into glorious-looking woman, makes unfortunate marriage with her cousin, Emperor Franz Josef, and moves into his palace. Mother-in-law/aunt loathes her and husband does not care -- Sisi fasts and suffers from all manner of illnesses, whilst spending her time visiting hospitals and old people's homes or taking solitary holidays in the sun to recover her health. Her husband drowns and Sisi, in heavy mourning veil, is mistaken on one of her walks for someone else and stabbed to death by an Italian anarchist. Not surprising that she's an icon in Munich, particularly with the gay community.

Open 10am-6pm.

The museum is celebrating its 100th birthday in 2003 and has various special exhibitions. Not that it needs them -- it's very large, with its permanent exhibits alone covering a floor space of 55,000 m².

There are four main floors, covering everything from aeronautical exhibits (look out for a homemade aircraft built for a family of five to escape across the border from Eastern Germany - powered by two scooter engines...they were picked up by the Stasi on the eve of their intended getaway) to the Zeiss Planetarium (costs extra); via chemistry, ceramics, and computer technology (with enciphering and decrypting machines), glass-blowing demonstrations (cannily, they then try to sell you the flower/key-fob/animal you've seen being made), mining and musical instruments (including some great early automated keyboards and grandfather-clock chiming mechanisms), optics (including circus-ground distorting mirrors and some nifty displays of light refraction through prisms), photography and pharmaceuticals, and railways (a history lesson of design and construction, followed up by a room-sized model railway from your childhood).

Thirty-to-sixty-minute free guided tours round almost each exhibition leave on the hour or half-hour (there's a list on the website or available when you buy your ticket and get your mini-map). From the cafe of the fourth floor, get a cup of decent-ish coffee and a great view. Outside, you'll be able to see the barometer clock in the courtyard (see photo below).

Tel: 89 2179-1. Fax: 89 2179-324. http://www.deutsches-museum.de. Open 9am-5pm (Wed. 9am-8pm). U-bahn stop of the same name.

The Marienplatz is the heart and centre of the city -- tourists wander or collect to see the glockenspiel on the Neues Rathaus, locals eat their lunch or read the paper. The square started out as a corn market, later became an execution site and jousting arena, and then, in 1315, Emperor Ludwig the Bavarian decreed that the square should never be built on. That seems to have been honoured (save for a statue in the centre outside the Rathaus -- see picture below) and it's a pedestrianised, fairly leisurely spot with some very interesting buildings and sights.

The Neues Rathaus (New Town Hall) fills the whole of the northern edge of the platz. Though it looks for all the world like a true Gothic, it dates from only 1867-1909. Its tower is 80m tall and can be accessed via a lift just inside and to the left as you pass from the platz into a mini-beer garden. Tickets are sold on the 4th floor (€2pp) and then you head up to the 9th floor for a pretty good view of the centre of town. The famed glockenspiel is however a big disappointment -- it's way, way up (if you're into that sort of thing, bring binoculars!) and very little happens when, at 11am, noon, 5pm and 9pm, the chimes ring out and two-tiered figures "burst" into life. Most striking on the town hall is the intricacy of the many, many figures which line the walls and roof (see photo below). Also look out above the arched stone entrances for the plaques featuring the monk who remains the symbol of Munchen.

To the right of the new pretender is the Altes Rathaus, a far more elegant (though confusingly younger-looking) whitewashed building dating from 1475. Its beautiful square tower apparently houses a toy museum ("Spiegelzeugmuseum") but it's otherwise inaccessible. Musicians often busk underneath its white right-hand arch. In the centre of the platz outside the Neues Rathaus is a statue of the Madonna with, on each of the four corners of the plinth, mini-cherubic warriors doing battle with representations of heresy, famine, war and plague.

To the far right, just beyond the square, though its spire is visible, is St Peter's, the oldest church in the city (records date from 1169), beloved by locals. Also, on the way into the platz from the south, you'll pass a wooden door into the Burgersaal, a former meeting place-cum-church. Downstairs is a low-ceilinged chapel, dedicated to Father Rupert Mayer (whose lies entombed there) who was taken away by the Nazis as a vocal troublemaker but reinstated after vociferous complaints by his flock (sadly he died in 1945); upstairs is a magnificent, high-ceilinged auditorium with frescoed ceiling and beautiful organ and altarpiece.

Last but by no means least, on Frauenplatz is the Frauenkirche, fast becoming the symbol of the city -- as well as going up the south of the two oxidised copper onion-domed towers (€3pp, every day save short closure between 3 and 3:15pm on Saturdays for bell ringing), by climbing a spiral staircase and then ascending in the lift, do go inside. It's a fairly minimalist interior, badly damaged in WWII (there are some photos to show how the walls were blown in and you can see from the stained glass windows the level of necessary reconstruction), though it trades in part off the "Devil's footprint." There are various stories for tourists -- my favourite one goes that the church's architect contracted to sell his soul if he failed to build a church in which no windows could be seen -- on delivery day, Satan came to collect, only to be frustrated when the architect demonstrated that, from a certain angle, no window could be seen -- in fury, the devil combusted, leaving a black footprint in the marble floor... -- these days, there are of course many and varied attractive windows.

More striking than any of this is the width of the church and the straight, gleaming white columns -- most of Munich's churches have a pleasing plainness to them (see in particular the Theaterkirche and Ludwig's kirche, both on Ludwidstrasse); there is magnificence and intricacy in design but it's not overwhelmingly gilded and ornate (though sights like Nymphenburg Palace more than make up for that!)

There are lots of sandwich shops round the platz, selling great bread/rolls or open sandwiches for an in situ lunch or which make it a good place to stock up before heading out for the rest of the day, if you're in the market for a picnic and haven't tracked down the Victualenmarkt. For dessert, there are unexpectedly good-value sorbets or ice creams to enjoy in warm weather. There's also a tourist information office.