A weekend in Munich
18 h route5 stopsBest: May to September, when the Isar and the beer gardens are openUpdated July 2026
Munich has more square metres of good museum than any other German city and, at the same time, a river people swim in mid-centre. A weekend covers both as long as you don’t try to do them on the same day: Saturday is indoors, Sunday is outdoors.
The one condition is not also wanting the Alps. They’re an hour away by train and they pull hard, but fitting Neuschwanstein into a weekend means spending one of your two days on a coach and getting back after dark. Two days, stay put. Three days, then yes.
The route, stop by stop
5 STOPS- 01
Saturday: the Alte Pinakothek
The Wittelsbachs ruled Bavaria for seven hundred and thirty-eight consecutive years, a European record, and in that time they bought a great many paintings. The Alte Pinakothek opened in 1836 to show them and was among the first public galleries in the world: Ludwig I had it built with the explicit idea that other museums would copy it, and they did.
Inside is the largest Rubens collection anywhere, the Dürer self-portrait everyone meets in some book or other, Altdorfer, Brueghel. It sits in the Kunstareal, a quarter with three picture galleries and several more museums inside four blocks, so the trap is trying two in one day.
Don’t: one, properly, then outside.
- 02
Saturday: Nymphenburg
The Wittelsbach summer palace is a seven-hundred-metre frontage with a park behind it larger than the old town, and the tram gets you there in twenty minutes.
Ludwig II, the castle king, was born here in 1845, and here is the golden carriage he rode around in at night across the snow, which explains the man better than any label.
The room to see is the Schönheitengalerie: thirty-six portraits of women Ludwig I had painted simply because he found them beautiful, regardless of class, cobblers’ daughters hang beside princesses, and one of them, the dancer Lola Montez, ended up costing him his throne in 1848.
It’s a nineteenth-century royal whim carried off with total nerve, and there it still is.
- 03
Saturday night: the table that isn’t yours
In a Munich beer hall there is no “table for two”: there are long benches and you sit wherever two gaps are, next to whoever is there. You ask “is this free?”, they shuffle up, done. Anyone from southern Europe finds this excruciating for ten minutes and then it’s the best part of the night.
The exception has a sign on it and it pays to recognise it: if a table carries a Stammtisch plaque, that’s the regulars’ table and it isn’t for you, even empty. It’s a centuries-old institution and it isn’t up for debate.
The rest is simple: beer is ordered by the Maß, a litre, and if it arrives with two fingers of head it was poured properly.
- 04
Sunday: the Deutsches Museum
No science and technology museum anywhere runs bigger, and this one sits on an island in the river, which already says something about the scale. It was founded in 1903 on an idea that was odd at the time: that ordinary people could touch the machines instead of looking at them over a rope. It still runs that way.
There’s a real submarine cut in half, reconstructed mines under the floor that you walk through, aircraft hanging overhead and lightning demonstrations at several hundred thousand volts at set times. You can’t see it all: it’s impossible, and anyone who tries leaves hating it. Pick two floors.
And it’s the perfect Sunday plan because in Germany there’s almost nothing else you can do on a Sunday.
- 05
Sunday: swimming in the Isar
The Isar ran boxed in concrete until, between 2000 and 2011, the city spent a fortune putting it back in its natural bed: it took out the walls, widened the channel, laid gravel. It worked, and today there are eight kilometres of wild river inside the city that you can swim in.
The spot is the Flaucher, to the south: wide gravel banks, willows, people barbecuing and swimming. The water is alpine meltwater, so it’s freezing in August and it still has current, so it isn’t a pool and some stretches carry warnings.
It’s the most Munich thing you can do on a Sunday afternoon, and it’s free.
Frequently asked
Is a weekend enough for Munich?
Yes, if you split it: one day of museums, the Kunstareal or the Deutsches Museum, and one of streets, river and beer gardens. What doesn’t fit is adding the Alps: Neuschwanstein eats one of your two days whole on a coach.
How does sitting down in a Munich beer hall work?
You sit wherever there’s room, on long benches with strangers: you ask if it’s free and they make space. The one exception is a table marked Stammtisch, the regulars’ table, which you don’t take even when it’s empty.
Can you swim in Munich’s river?
Yes. The Isar was renaturalised between 2000 and 2011 and there are eight kilometres of river inside the city where people swim. The classic spot is the Flaucher, to the south. The water is alpine meltwater: freezing even in August, and it has current, so some stretches carry warnings.