Where to stay in Munich

Altstadt

You cross the old town in twenty minutes, and it holds nearly everything you came to see: Marienplatz, the market, the Residenz, the Frauenkirche. Staying here is paying not to think, and for three nights that’s a perfectly reasonable decision.

What you won’t have is neighbourhood life: this is shops and offices, and at eight in the evening the noise leaves with the last shutter. You eat at the beer hall or cross into another quarter.

And it’s worth remembering that in Munich what you see from the window doesn’t justify the price of the window.

Maxvorstadt

North of the centre, with the three galleries inside it and two universities: a quarter of students and people who work in museums, which means bookshops, cafés that open early and bars that don’t charge centre prices. It’s ten minutes on foot from Marienplatz.

It’s the best value for money in Munich and almost nobody picks it, because it isn’t on the postcard. The other advantage is that the English Garden runs along its eastern edge, so you can have breakfast, cross the park and be at the Eisbach wave before ten.

First time here and not wanting to pay for the centre: come to this one.

Schwabing

In the early twentieth century Kandinsky, Klee and half the Blaue Reiter lived here, and Schwabing was a byword for German bohemia. What’s left of that is the name and the streets, because today it’s one of the most expensive and calmest quarters in the city: Art Nouveau buildings, wide streets, families. You sleep well and eat well, with the English Garden along the eastern edge and a direct U-Bahn to the centre. There’s nothing to see in the list sense, and that’s the point: it’s a quarter you stay in, not one you visit. A good choice with children or if you’re here more than three nights.

Haidhausen

Across the Isar to the east, Haidhausen is what passes in Munich for an old neighbourhood: narrow streets, small squares, low nineteenth-century buildings that survived. It used to be called the French quarter for its street names and it still has the air. It has the best thing about sleeping here: you’re ten minutes from the centre by S-Bahn and five on foot from the river, which is where this city’s life actually happens in summer. It’s cheaper than the centre, there’s somewhere to eat without a booking, and you won’t see a wheeled suitcase all morning.

Around the Hauptbahnhof

Munich’s cheap hotels cluster around the main station, and that’s where everyone who books late ends up. The advantage is real: the S1 and S8 to the airport leave from there, the centre is ten minutes on foot and Oktoberfest fifteen.

The catch isn’t safety, which isn’t a problem, but that it’s an ugly area of fast food and traffic with nothing to make it yours. It’s fine for one night before an early flight, and it’s what exists if you come during Oktoberfest and want to pay something sane.

For a three-day trip, anything else on this list is better.