guide to Munich books

Traveling to Munich? Learn what to see and how to get around from these books (books on other cities):

More Munich books


Munich (German: München, German pronunciation: [ˈmʏnçən] listen ; Austro-Bavarian: Minga[2]) is the capital city of Bavaria, Germany. Munich is located on the River Isar north of the Bavarian Alps. Munich is the third largest city in Germany, after Berlin and Hamburg. There are approximately 1.35 million inhabitants within Munich.[3]

The city's motto is "München Mag Dich" ("Munich Likes You"), before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" (Worldcity with Heart). Its native name, München, is derived from the Old German word for Mönche, which means "Monks" in English. This is the reason for the monk on the city's coat of arms. Black and gold - the colours of the Holy Roman Empire - have been the city's official colours since the time of Ludwig the Bavarian.

Munich is not the only location within Bavaria known as "München". Three such locations exist: the one which is known as "Munich"; another which is northeast of the city of Nuremberg, and also Hutthurm, a town north of the city of Passau.

Munich lies on the elevated plains of Upper Bavaria, about 50 km north of the northern edge of the Alps, at an altitude of about 520 m ASL. The local rivers are the Isar and the Würm. Munich is situated in the Northern Alpine Foreland. The northern part of this sandy plateau includes a highly fertile flint area which is no longer affected by the folding processes found in the Alps, while the southern part is covered by morainic hills. In between there are fields of fluvio-glacial out-wash, like around Munich. Wherever these deposits get thinner, the ground water can permeate the gravel surface and flood the area, leading to marshes as in the north of Munich.

The article above is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Munich".