Munich Shopping

Several multifloor department stores offering a cornucopia of goods from fashion to food, plus a cluster of streets lined with trendy boutiques and interspersed with many smart Konditorei (cafes), make Munich Germany's best city for shopping. The larger stores are along the Neuhauserstrasse and Kaufingerstrasse, which together form a long, pedestrian only thoroughfare between the main city center squares, the Karlsplatz and the Marienplatz.

One store, Karstadt, has three buildings, and shoppers will find an excellent food department and porcelain from Meissen, East Germany. The Hertie store specializes in loden (the distinctively heavy woolen cloth)and more food while the Kaufhof store has just about everything from shoe repairs to a rooftop restaurant and beer garden. Another, Ludwig Beck am Rathauseck, on Marienplatz, sponsors young designers. Just off the square is the picturesque Viktualienmarkt beneath the trees of Old Munich.

More fashionable shops are situated along Maximilianstrasse, Residenzstrasse, Theatinerstrasse, and the block around the Bayersicher Hof Hotel. The first named is the most noted, with French, Italian, and American quality and high price tags as well as furs, leather, porcelain, silver, hunting clothes, and antiques. Residenzstrasse has the Bogner store for ski clothes and the Wallach Haus fur Volkskunst which, as its name suggests, has Bavarian crafts and clothing. A similar store is Ingo on Leopoldstrasse.