Alter Peter: The Church Older Than the City
Why is it significant?
Tilt your head back at the tower of St. Peter, rising above the roofs with its green lantern cap and the narrow gallery running around it. Nobody in Munich calls it St. Peter. It is simply Alter Peter, Old Peter, as if it were a grumpy grandfather of the town.
Key Facts
| Place | Alter Peter: The Church Older Than the City |
|---|---|
| Address | Rindermarkt 1, 80331 München, Germany |
| Geo Coordinates | 48.13650, 11.57560 |
| Part of Walk | Salt, Beer and Pretzels: A Food Lover's Walk Through Munich's Old Town |
| Generated | Generated |
Tilt your head back at the tower of St. Peter, rising above the roofs with its green lantern cap and the narrow gallery running around it. Nobody in Munich calls it St. Peter. It is simply Alter Peter, Old Peter, as if it were a grumpy grandfather of the town.
And that is fair, because Old Peter is older than Munich. This little rise is the Petersbergl, where monks had a settlement before Henry the Lion moved the salt bridge in 1158. The city's very name comes from them: Munichen, at the monks'. That is why the city's coat of arms still shows a small figure in a monk's habit, the Münchner Kindl. The church you see has been rebuilt many times, Romanesque, then Gothic, then Baroque, but it is still the oldest parish of the city.
If your legs are willing, the tower has around three hundred steps up to the gallery. From the top you look straight down onto the striped awnings of the Viktualienmarkt, the town hall towers... and on a clear day with the warm alpine wind called the Föhn, the whole chain of the Alps appears on the horizon, seemingly close enough to touch.
Inside, in a side altar, there is something you will not forget. Behind glass lies the skeleton of Saint Munditia, a Roman martyr, brought to Munich in 1675. Her bones are dressed in gold and covered in jewels, and glass eyes stare out from the skull. Baroque Catholic Bavaria loved these jewelled saints from the catacombs of Rome. Today they unsettle almost everyone.
The little square below is the Rindermarkt, the medieval cattle market, where livestock was bought and sold in the heart of town. The bronze cattle lying around the modern fountain are its memory. At the end of the Second World War the church lay in ruins, and Munich rebuilt it stone by stone over the following decades. Now walk the few steps north to the corner of Marienplatz, and look for the stairs leading down below the town hall.