The 19 Best Places to Drink and Stay in München

Two restored baroque landmarks in the heart of Munich's old town, a former state bank and a grand old palace, now share a roof as a luxury hotel. Towering baroque ceilings frame contemporary art, rooms run toward timeless and well-appointed, and the Asaya Spa covers wellness thoroughly. Michelin awarded it 2 Keys. It's new enough that the staff still seems to be trying hard, which, at this address, is a pleasant surprise.

1. Michelin Guide 2 Keys
2. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star
3. The 50 The 50 Discovery

The neo-Renaissance façade has been a masked-ball hall, a wool factory, and an antique shop, so its current life as a quietly luxurious hotel feels almost restrained by comparison. Rooms run to real antiques and architecturally odd angles, the rooftop pool has views to the Alps, and the minibar is complimentary. Matsuhisa downstairs handles the Japanese-Peruvian end of things. The Michelin Guide awarded it 2 Keys.

1. Michelin Guide 2 Keys
2. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star

The glass-enclosed rooftop pool, suspended above Maximilianstrasse with views over neoclassical Munich, tells you most of what you need to know about this grand luxury hotel. Been around forever, holds a Michelin Key and Forbes Four Star, and sits steps from the opera house and the city's best shopping. The rooms are warm and unhurried rather than aggressively designed, and the concierge team has a reputation for punctuality that is, by local standards, practically a religion.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star
2. Michelin Guide 1 Key

Rooms that look out over the Old Botanical Gardens give this Rocco Forte hotel an unexpectedly tranquil feeling for a property sitting squarely in the city center. The design is crisp and contemporary without tipping into marble-and-gold excess, and the rooms are famously generous, built large on purpose from the start. A spa, pool, and Italian restaurant round things out. It holds a Forbes Four Star and two Michelin Keys.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star
2. Michelin Guide 2 Keys

The roof terrace on the fourth floor, overlooking a quiet Bogenhausen street, is the detail that gives Hotel München Palace away: this is a place that prefers warm wood paneling and discreet elegance to anything that wants to be photographed. A boutique hotel near the Prinzregenten Theater and a short walk from the English Garden, it earns a Michelin Key for classically styled rooms that feel genuinely comfortable rather than aggressively designed.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Recommended
2. Michelin Guide 1 Key

The building started life as the Royal Bavarian Main Post Office, and the grand carved facade still says exactly that. Inside, though, it's a different story: a 396-room luxury hotel with minimalist rooms, massive stone bathtubs, and maisonette suites on the eighth floor where the ceilings slope toward views of the Alps. The Spa Lagune runs to mosaic tile and a full indoor pool. French brasserie downstairs, one minute from the main station.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Recommended
2. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

1. The 50 The 50 Discovery

1. The 50 The 50 Discovery

1. The 50 The 50 Discovery

A single room so small that on busy nights you simply don't get in, Barroom holds a handful of people at most, which means the lone bartender is close enough to overhear your problems without being asked. It sits east of the Isar, a taxi ride from the rest of the Munich bar circuit, so you're committing to the detour. Cosy is a polite word for it; intimate is more accurate.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

A cocktail bar on a quiet residential street that somehow works as both a pilgrimage site for serious Negroni drinkers and a local hang for people who just want somewhere good to land on a Tuesday. The Campari ambassador who runs it has scaled up with each move, which means more room and a sharper team behind the bar. Order a Negroni, obviously, but nobody's going to stop you from ordering another.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

The rococo plaster ceiling alone justifies pushing past the hotel lobby. Falk's Bar is a cocktail bar in the grand European tradition, all gilt mirrors and ornate walls around a central island bar, tucked inside the Bayerischer Hof. The room has a way of making you feel underdressed even when you aren't, so most guests seem to arrive having planned the outfit in advance.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

Three gold lampshades hang over the sunken bar like a chandelier that made a sensible decision. This cocktail bar sits tucked into the grand lobby of a five-star Munich institution, past the marble and the hush, in a pocket of red leather armchairs that feels borrowed from a private club. The hotel around it skews old-school and a little formal, but the bar wears that well.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

Dark wood and candlelight fill a handsome corner building near the River Isar, and Pacific Times takes the brief seriously. It's a cocktail bar with a long spirits list that notes, charmingly, whether each bottle came from a pot still or a continuous one. Classics are stirred or shaken as they should be, draught beer rounds out the options, and the whole operation shares DNA with the sister bar Barista down the road.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

Bamboo walls, puffer fish hanging from a matted rush ceiling, and hand-carved tiki poles set the mood before you've even ordered. This basement tiki cocktail bar beneath the Hotel Bayerischer Hof is the Munich outpost of the long-running global chain, which means an oversized illustrated drinks menu and tan leather banquette seating that makes the whole thing feel pleasantly, deliberately out of time.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 3 stars · Difford's Guide

Leaded windows and collegiate crests on wood-panelled walls give this old-school cocktail bar a look borrowed, quite literally, from Harry's Bar Paris, which is exactly where it started. Been around forever by Munich standards, with a jazz pianist in the basement and a members-only cigar room upstairs. The kind of place where the bartender has probably been pouring longer than most of the clientele has been alive.

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide