You don't need to like beer to visit Munich. But it certainly helps.

Yes, the home of the world's most famous beer festival, the Oktoberfest, lives up to its reputation of having a fondness for a local brew.

And this pulsating city certainly has more than enough to keep you occupied - combined, of course, with a trip to the Allianz Arena, home of Bayern Munich.


However, a few hours or so in a beer hall is an experience to savour.


Most tourists - including me - head to the self-proclaimed 'most famous bar in the world', the Hofbrauhaus.


The huge cavernous hall's scores of bench tables are packed from lunchtime til late with out of towners to sample a litre - that's a two pinter to you and me - of Hofbrau to the strains of the Oompah band.

The Hofbrauhaus is in the very heart of Munich's old town. At its centre is Marienpltatz, a plaza dominated by the glorious gothic facade of the Alte Rathaus (old town hall) and the Glockenspiel in its tower that tells you the time (and how long it is to kick off).

Dominating the skyline are the two onion-shaped domes that sit aside the top of Frauenkirche (Cathedral of Our Lady), towering above Munich for more than 500 years. Most importantly, they're what you look for when you get totally lost.

Town hall: Munich Rathaus in the heart of the city.

The domes survived destruction in the Second World War but much of Munich was flattened, so whilst a smattering of old buildings remain along cobbled sidewalks, it's not quite up there in the 'chocolate box' stakes with the likes of Prague or Tallinn.

No, Munich's definitely more of your bustling, working city shown as the main shopping drag, Neuhauser, runs right through the middle.

Munich was of course the venue of the 1972 Olympics, one that paved the way for all future games with its purpose-built park keeping all the venues and the 'village' of athletes together. The Olympic stadium may now be 35 years old and showing its age but it was revolutionary at the time and the bowl is still in use, albeit no longer home of Bayern. They are at the Allianz, a bizarre yet impressive cross between a football stadium and a spaceship.

Shooting up into the skyline is the 950ft high observation tower affording awesome views of Munich and out into the Bavarian countryside.

As viewed from on high: The Olympic complex

The city's name is forever linked with tragedy and torment. The '72 Olympics are remembered for the assassination of Israeli sportsmen, and Man United's Busby Babes perished on the airport runway in 1958.

Then, back in the thirties, it was the birthplace of Naziism and Hitler's grand plan took shape just ten miles out in the first, and longest running wartime concentration camp, at Dachau. Today it remains a chilling, and poignant, place to visit.

Throw in the home of BMW, Europe's biggest urban-park in Englischer Garten, countless museums and dozens more beer halls, Munich is a major assault on the senses. It has an edge, it has beer ... and it's a football city.