Münchner Stadtmuseum

Lonely Planet review

You could spend hours roaming through the collections of the rambling Münchner Stadtmuseum, making it a perfect rainy day destination.

Historical exhibits help you understand how the royal residence evolved into today's modern metropolis, but the main artistic draw is the ensemble of Erasmus Grasser's 10 spritelike Morris Dancers (1480), medieval travelling entertainers who performed at court and on market squares. The late Gothic figures originally adorned the ballroom of the Altes Rathaus.

Also of special note is the small but powerful section on Munich during the Third Reich that forms an enlightening complement to the nearby Jüdisches Museum (Jewish Museum). Set in a windowless hall among riveted steel plates, it reveals the city as the birthplace and spiritual centre of Nazism through excellent visuals - photographs to propaganda posters, Gestapo uniforms to flags, underground resistance papers to letters from concentration camp victims.

The upper floors house the speciality collections. A delightful diversion, not only for tots, is the Puppentheater-Museum, a fantasy world inhabited by an international cast of hand puppets, marionettes, shadow puppets, stick figures and all manner of dolls, dragons and devils. Call for upcoming shows.

The Musikinstrumenten-Museum is packed with fun, precious and rare sound machines from around the world, including Indonesian ceremonial gongs and mechanical musical instruments. Some of them are cranked up regularly during concerts. The Foto Museum (Photography Museum) focuses on the early years of the medium, beginning around 1840.

The Filmmuseum keeps things dynamic with well-curated screenings of tributes, retrospectives, foreign films, both old and new. Directors, actors and film historians often swing by for pre-show presentations.