Spots

“The intellectual cradle of Schwabing stood, beyond any doubt, on the Türkenstraße” — this sentence from the Abendzeitung of 1955 still rings true. Where tourists shout “Schwabing”, the turn-of-the-century bohemia did its rounds: Frank Wedekind, Karl Valentin, Ludwig Thoma, Erich Mühsam, Joachim Ringelnatz. They all performed at the Simplicissimus cabaret (Türkenstr. 57), opened by Kathi Kobus in 1903 — the venue became the legendary Alter Simpl, which still exists today (with a brief insolvency in 2023; reopened in 2024).

The Sep-Ruf-Haus on Theresienstraße

On the corner of Türkenstraße and Theresienstraße 46–48 stands one of Munich’s most important post-war buildings: Sep Ruf’s eight-storey residential tower, built 1950–1952 for the “Vereinigung zur Behebung der Wohnungsnot” (Association for the Relief of the Housing Shortage). In April 1951 Munich residents queued to view the show flats — they were looking at something that the conservative post-war architecture of Munich had not seen before.

Sep Ruf (1908–1982) — later co-creator of the Chancellor’s bungalow in Bonn (1964) and of the German pavilion at the Brussels Expo 1958 (with Egon Eiermann) — made an architectural statement here: floor-to-ceiling window elements without lintel, parapet or threshold. What sounds obvious today was a social manifesto in 1951. Through “open space connected to nature”, Ruf argued, “human dignity” could be conveyed architecturally even in social housing. Architecture critic Hans Eckstein at the opening: “Of great importance for planning and building in Munich, a city so dominated by a conservative local spirit.”

The house has been a listed building since 1988 and celebrated its seventieth birthday in 2021. Walking up the Türkenstraße from the Brienner Straße towards the art academy, look up.

Today

Student pubs (Atzinger, Schall & Rauch), antiquarian bookshops, the Astor Film Lounge at ARRI (Türkenstr. 91), the Italian-Bavarian back-and-forth of pizza, schnitzel and espresso. The Türkenstraße is the only street in Maxvorstadt that has largely kept its bohemian character — even if the boutique rents have long since reached Champs-Élysées levels.

In 1857 the street was named after Friedrich Wilhelm Schelling (1775–1854) — natural philosopher, from 1807 secretary-general of the Academy of Fine Arts, from 1827 lecturer at LMU. A Munich idealist who tied romanticism to science — a fitting namesake for a street that was to become the intellectual main axis of Maxvorstadt.

Schelling-Salon — since 1872

At Schellingstr. 54, the Mehr family has run the Schelling-Salon since 1872 — a tavern opened in Viennese café-restaurant style, where the world of craftsmen and clerks met the world of bohemians and failed existences. The guest lists of the early decades included Rilke, Brecht, Ringelnatz, Ibsen, Lenin — and a certain Adolf Hitler, who after several unpaid bills was banned from the house and moved next door to the Osteria Bavaria (today Osteria Italiana, Schellingstr. 62). Today the Schelling-Salon, with billiard tables, table football and schnitzel, is a favourite of students, walking tours and local reporters.

Today

The Schellingstraße runs from Türkenstraße to Schleißheimer Straße and is arguably Maxvorstadt’s most student-flavoured address. Pubs (Schall & Rauch, Atzinger), bookshops (Words’ Worth), Italian trattorias (Osteria Italiana, Porto Cervo) and Lost Weekend — café, co-working space and bookshop in one — set the tone. Anyone hoping to see “real Munich student life” comes here.

Barer Straße has carried its current name since 2 March 1826 — by order of King Ludwig I. Before that it had been called, at various times, Karolinenstraße, Wilhelminenstraße and Sommerstraße. The present name commemorates the Battle of Brienne 1814, in which Bavarian troops halted Napoleon near the French town of Bar-sur-Aube. An unusual punchline: a Munich museum mile named after a battlefield.

The Pinakothek diagonal

Barer Straße runs from Lenbachplatz in the south via Karolinenplatz, crossing Gabelsbergerstraße, Theresienstraße and Schellingstraße before ending at Geschwister-Scholl-Platz in the north. In between lies what only a few decades ago was meadow and barracks ground — but is today one of the world’s densest museum quarters, with an unbroken chronological arc from antiquity to the present:

• Alte Pinakothek (Barer Str. 27) — opened 1836 by Leo von Klenze, then the largest museum building in the world.
• Neue Pinakothek (Barer Str. 29) — under renovation; the collection is temporarily housed in the Marstall.
• Pinakothek der Moderne (Barer Str. 40) — opened 2002, the urban turning point for Maxvorstadt.
• Museum Brandhorst (Theresienstr. 35a, on the corner) — opened 2009, enclosed in a skin of 36,000 ceramic rods.

Today

Barer Straße is Maxvorstadt’s tourist artery — which the residents don’t always love, but it plays into the tills of cafés and galleries between Brienner and Theresienstraße beautifully. Galerie Biedermann, Walter Storms Galerie (Schellingstr. 48, a side street), Glitch Bookstore (Barer Str. 70, successor to Lillemor’s) — all live off the magnetism of the museums.

On 1 December 1812 the street was named — after Princess Auguste Amalie of Bavaria (1788–1851), eldest daughter of King Max I Joseph. In 1806 Napoleon had her politically married to his stepson Eugène de Beauharnais — the man for whom Leo von Klenze would later build the magnificent Leuchtenberg-Palais on Odeonsplatz. Augustenstraße thus commemorates the dynastic chess piece that secured Bavaria the royal title.

The birth of the Munich Kammerspiele

At Augustenstraße 89, in 1911, a theatre hall opened its doors that would serve until 1926 as the first permanent venue of the Munich Kammerspiele — one of the most important stages of German theatrical modernism. The pieces played here left the bourgeois 19th-century theatre behind: Frank Wedekind, Bertolt Brecht’s early successes, the expressionist drama. Only in 1926 did the ensemble move to the Kammerspiele on Maximilianstraße, where it still plays today. As the “mother house” of the Kammerspiele, Augustenstraße remains an address with an aura.

Today

Along 1.3 km between Dachauer Straße and Josephsplatz, Augustenstraße is the most sober of the four main axes — less spectacular than Türkenstraße or Barer Straße, but denser in everyday life. The Munich Readery (Augustenstr. 104), Wirtshaus Maxvorstadt (No. 53), Bobby’s Italian, Café Josefina, Bowls & Blenders. In 2024 residents and the city council debated traffic calming and a redesign — Maxvorstadt in microcosm: caught between densification and a wish for more charm rather than more chaos.