Munich in 3 Days — A Royal Estate Everyone Still Uses

Almost everything worth seeing in Munich used to belong to one family and now belongs to the state that replaced them. The Wittelsbachs' town palace is a museum you walk through in slippers over the parquet, their picture collection is the Alte Pinakothek, their summer house is Nymphenburg, their hunting park is the biggest beer garden on earth, the court brewery still brews under state ownership, and the canal they dug for the palace grounds now produces a standing wave that people surf in the middle of the city. That transfer, from private estate to public property, is what makes Munich feel like a much bigger capital than its size and why so much of it is cheap or free. Day one is the old town and the Residenz, day two is the Blue Rider painters and a long walk through the English Garden to a beer garden under a Chinese pagoda, day three is the summer palace, the 1972 Olympic park and the one Munich institution that never was royal, BMW. Two calendar rules. Day one cannot be a Sunday, because the Viktualienmarkt stalls are shut; days two and three cannot be a Monday, because the Lenbachhaus, the Alte Pinakothek and the BMW Museum all close. A Monday works only as day one. Beer gardens and the Nymphenburg park pavilions run roughly April to mid-October, which is the window this is written for. Dachau is deliberately not in these three days: it needs a half day at absolute minimum and it does not belong wedged between a palace and a beer garden, so give it its own. Around 240 euros a head covers every ticket, the airport train, a day pass and every listed meal; beds and flights are on top.