Hotel Bayerischer Hof

The Bayerischer Hof has been run by the Volkhardt family for generations since its 1841 founding at the behest of King Ludwig I, and it remains one of Europe's great independent city hotels—host to the Munich Security Conference each winter and to Bavarian social life year-round. The complex on Promenadeplatz has grown into a small village: hundreds of rooms, a cinema, a nightclub, a jazz club and enough restaurants and bars to fill a week without stepping outside.

Rooms range widely, from Bavarian country-house classicism to contemporary floors shaped by designers including Axel Vervoordt, whose serene, gallery-like rooms are the connoisseur's pick. Falk's Bar occupies the Spiegelsaal, the mirrored 19th-century hall that survived the war intact—one of Munich's most atmospheric rooms in which to drink anything.

Atelier, the intimate flagship restaurant, has earned Michelin's highest recognition for contemporary cooking, while Trader Vic's tiki cellar and the rooftop Blue Spa—designed by Andrée Putman with a retractable roof and Frauenkirche views—cover the extremes in between. Marienplatz is five minutes on foot. As a self-contained Munich institution with genuine family character, the Bayerischer Hof has no local equal.