Museum
Quarter
Three Pinakotheken, a Glyptothek, a Brandhorst, a Lenbachhaus, a Documentation Centre on National Socialism, a world-class Technical University — and in their midst a square that wanted to be Athens. The middle area of the Maxvorstadt concentrates more high culture and heavy history on a single square kilometre than any other district of Munich.
History
Königsplatz was Ludwig I.'s favourite project. Karl von Fischer designed it as a monumental forecourt on the way from the Karolinenplatz to Nymphenburg; Leo von Klenze implemented and extended the idea. By 1830 his Glyptothek stood with its Doric temple front, by 1838 the Ionic Exhibition Building (today the State Collections of Classical Antiquities) faced it; in 1862, as the western terminus, came the Corinthian Propyläen to Klenze's plans, dedicated to the Greek war of independence and to the kingship of Ludwig's second-born son Otto. Three Greek orders on a single square — as a textbook of antiquity.
A few hundred metres east, the art quarter grew in parallel. The Alte Pinakothek (Klenze, 1836) was, at its opening, the largest museum in the world — Ludwig used it to make the Wittelsbach painting collection accessible to Europe. The Neue Pinakothek followed in 1853 (today's building by Stephan Braunfels); the Pinakothek der Moderne opened in 2002 as the third link in the chain. With the Lenbachhaus in Franz von Lenbach's former atelier palace (1891) and the Museum Brandhorst (Sauerbruch Hutton, 2009), the northern Briennerstraße is today one of the densest museum miles in the world.
The second great layer: the Nazi legacy. From 1931 the National Socialists built their party quarter at Königsplatz. The Brown House (Brienner Str. 45, today site of the NS-Dokumentationszentrum), the Führerbau (today the University of Music and Performing Arts) and the two Honour Temples on Königsplatz — Hitler had the square paved with granite slabs to use it as a parade ground. The temples were blown up in 1947; after decades of dispute, Königsplatz was greened over again in 1988. Today the area is at once memorial and gallery.
The third layer: the Technical University of Munich. Founded as a Polytechnic School in 1868, it moved into the building on Arcisstraße in 1872 — today one of the world's leading centres for engineering sciences, AI and quantum technology. Times Higher Education ranking 26 worldwide, Germany's number 2 behind LMU, and the heart of the Munich Innovation Belt stretching between Maxvorstadt, Garching and Freising.
Significance
International museum specialists call the Kunstareal one of the densest museum districts in the world — a verdict that puts the quarter alongside London's South Kensington Museums Mile, Berlin's Museumsinsel complex and New York's Museum Mile. Along roughly 500 metres of Briennerstraße sit six houses of world standing. More than 2.5 million visitors come each year.
Politically the quarter is the most uncomfortable place in the city. Anyone visiting the NS-Dokumentationszentrum (König+Heitlinger, 2015) on the former site of the Brown House walks through a memorial of white concrete, opposite the Führerbau, with a view of the plinths of the demolished Honour Temples. Rarely is a place so precise in speaking about its own history. Briennerstraße, once the NSDAP parade route, is today the diagonal between high culture and memorial.
Wissenschaftlich ist das Quartier die östliche Hälfte des Munich Innovation Belt. Die TUM allein hat 103 Start-ups im Jahr 2024 ausgegründet — mehr als jede andere deutsche Universität. Rund um den TUM-Stammcampus haben sich SAP, Google, Microsoft und Siemens niedergelassen; die Achse Arcisstraße — Theresienstraße — Türkenstraße ist Deutschlands dichteste Forschungsmeile.
The buildings
of the Museum Quarter.
Eine Stadt machen,König Ludwig I. von Bayern · 1825
die Deutschland
zur Ehre gereichen soll.