In Europe

the Bavarian monarchs Ludwig II and Luitpold. Creaking loudly, I cycle through old archways, past graceful fountains, the pseudo-Roman national theatre and the taut, nineteenth-century Ludwigstrasse. Look, it's still there, the Bayerische Hof, the hotel where Mrs Bechstein taught Adolf Hitler how to handle oysters and artichokes. And look, that was his apartment here in Munich, on the second floor of Prinsregentenplatz 16, now home to just another genteel Munich family. And here, the street in Schwabing where he started out, filled today with the exotic odours of Chinese, Indian,Russian, Italian and Mexican restaurants, at Schleissheimer Strasse 34. The enormous plaque that once hung here is now concealed under a thick layer of mortar.
    Schwabing was an island, Kandinsky so aptly observed. Until well into the twentieth century it lent Munich a certain fame, but it remained an island. The staid citizens of Munich were disgusted by this neighbour-hood full of prostitutes, students and anarchists. The residents of Schwabing, in turn, looked down on the coarse
Müncheners
who lived only for a plummy marriage and three litres of beer a day. According to the Bavarian historian Georg Frans, that divided Munich can be traced back to the trauma of the middle class concerning the period from 1919 up through Kurt Eisner's short-lived People's Republic of Bavaria. The rise of the Nazis in Munich, he says, was a direct result of that bloody civil war. David Large, in his account of Hitler's Munich, goes a few steps further. He feels that Munich's oft-praised urban culture has always had an anti-cosmopolitan and anti-liberal side.
    In that sense, Munich resembled Vienna: beneath the harmony and good cheer lay a society deeply at odds with itself, marked by great tension between rich and poor. In the space of three decades from 1880–1910, Munich grew from a provincial town into a metropolis. The population doubled, the housing was as wretched as Vienna's, but the immigrants kept on coming. Jewish merchants, scientists and bankers set the tone in this new urban climate. It was here that Hermann Tietz, of Jewish origin, inaugurated his chain of department stores: the small shopkeepers were furious. Property prices rose: Jewish financiers were blamed. Prostitution increased: people claimed that Tietz drove his salesgirls to disrepute by underpaying them. The fashionable
Staatsbürgerzeitung
began complaining about ‘the alarming rise in our city's Jewish element’, and predicted ‘the decline of the best among Munich's merchants’. Munich's first anti-Semitic party was set up in 1891. Then came the war, and after that violence crept into local politics. Finally, the tatty rabble-rouser from the Bürgerbräukeller took over the town.
    Munich was built to please the eye and inspire thoughts of awe, and the Nazis knew that. From their Braunes Haus on Brienner Strasse they expanded their territory further and further. By 1940 an entire Nazi districthad arisen adjacent to the centre of Munich, consisting of more than 50 buildings and providing work for more than 6,000 people. Grand plans were made for the future: the corner of Türkenstrasse was to be the site of, among other things, Hitler's monumental tomb.
    The Braunes Haus was bombed, then in 1945 demolished with explosives, all except its system of secret corridors and bunkers. A fair amount of the former Nazi district is still standing, however. It was in the Führerbau, a building on Cheisstrasse that seems on the inside to consist almost entirely of an incredibly huge ceremonial staircase, that the 1938 peace conference was held with Chamberlain, Daladier and Mussolini. Today it is a house full of song and runs on the grand piano, the Academy for Theatre and Music, but history still shines through in the form of the chic stretch of pavement once laid in front of it to honour the Führer. Across the street one can also still admire the Haus der Deutschen Kunst, a gallery of overbearing pillars, hasty ornamentation, all façade architecture with no hint of eternity. Of the two Pantheons built by the Nazis at the corner of Königsplatz, only the foundations remain, now overrun by bushes. The square itself has been divested of its granite slabs. Today, covered in a great deal of pacifist lawn, it has once again become the Athenian agora the Bavarian kings dreamed of for themselves. Everything here has been ploughed under and buried.
    Later on I cycle down monumental Ludwigstrasse