Private Munich Tours and Bavaria Programmes

What Munich is, and what it is not

Munich is the third-largest city in Germany and does not feel like it. The old centre is walkable end to end in half an hour, the river runs through it with people swimming in it in summer, and the Alps are visible from the upper floors on a clear day. Clients arriving from Berlin notice the difference immediately: Berlin is a capital that argues with itself, Munich is a capital that is comfortable.

What it is not is a place you can see in a morning. The museum holdings alone justify two full days, and the two things most first-time visitors have come for — Neuschwanstein and the Alps — are day trips out of the city, not sights within it. An itinerary that gives Munich one night and expects the castle as well will disappoint, and we say so before it is sold.

Inside the city

The Residenz is the largest city palace in Germany and the one most visitors skip in favour of Neuschwanstein, which is the wrong way round. It was the seat of the Wittelsbachs for 500 years, and the Antiquarium — a 66-metre Renaissance hall lined with busts and painted vaults — is the single most impressive room in Bavaria. The Treasury next door holds a thousand years of crowns and reliquaries.

The art is exceptional and clients rarely know it. The Alte Pinakothek holds one of the world’s great old-master collections, the Neue Pinakothek the nineteenth century, the Pinakothek der Moderne the twentieth, and the Lenbachhaus holds the Blaue Reiter group — Kandinsky, Marc, Muenter — in the largest concentration anywhere. Three of these are within two hundred metres of each other.

Beyond that: Marienplatz and the Glockenspiel, the Viktualienmarkt, the Asamkirche, the Englischer Garten with the surfers on the Eisbach standing wave, and Nymphenburg out to the west with its park and porcelain. For clients with an interest in engineering, the Deutsches Museum is the largest science and technology museum in the world and needs half a day of its own.

The day trips that matter

Neuschwanstein is two hours each way and is the reason many clients came to Germany at all. The important detail: the interior is seen only on the castle’s own timed tour, in the language and at the minute printed on the ticket. An outside guide accompanies the party to the gate and takes over afterwards. Tickets are timed and limited, and in summer they must be held weeks ahead. Combined with Linderhof or Oberammergau it makes a full and satisfying day; alone it is a lot of driving for forty minutes inside a building.

Closer in, the Alpine lakes — Tegernsee, Starnberger See, the Koenigssee further south — are under an hour and give the mountain day without the castle queue. Salzburg is ninety minutes and crosses into Austria. Nuremberg and Rothenburg are the Franconian direction and work as a pair.

Beer halls, and how to do them properly

The Hofbraeuhaus is the one clients name and the one we book last. It is enormous, it is loud, and it is almost entirely visitors. The Augustiner-Keller, the Loewenbraeukeller and the beer gardens at the Chinesischer Turm and the Hirschgarten are where the city actually drinks, and the difference in the evening a client remembers is considerable. Under the chestnut trees at the Hirschgarten there is seating for eight thousand people and it is still, somehow, pleasant.

Oktoberfest runs from late September into the first days of October. Tent tables are allocated through the tents themselves, they are gone ten to twelve months ahead, and the city’s hotel rates roughly double for the duration. If a client wants Oktoberfest, the conversation happens a year out, not in July.

When to send clients

May, June and September are the best weeks: warm, long light, and the beer gardens open. July and August are hot and busy. Oktoberfest and the large trade fairs distort hotel availability far beyond their own dates — we check the fair calendar before confirming any autumn programme. Advent turns Marienplatz over to the Christkindlmarkt and is genuinely lovely in the early evening, before the crowds arrive after work.