Café Luitpold: Cake in a Palace
Why is it significant?
On Brienner Straße, step through the door into a long glass counter lined with tortes, tarts and pastries, and behind it a bright hall under a glass roof, with palms and the murmur of a hundred coffee cups.
Key Facts
| Place | Café Luitpold: Cake in a Palace |
|---|---|
| Address | Brienner Straße 11, 80333 München, Germany |
| Geo Coordinates | 48.14300, 11.57480 |
| Part of Walk | Salt, Beer and Pretzels: A Food Lover's Walk Through Munich's Old Town |
| Generated | Generated |
On Brienner Straße, step through the door into a long glass counter lined with tortes, tarts and pastries, and behind it a bright hall under a glass roof, with palms and the murmur of a hundred coffee cups.
Café Luitpold opened in 1888, in the newly built Palais Luitpold, and it took its name from the Prince Regent Luitpold, who governed Bavaria after King Ludwig the Second died in 1886. In its golden years it was one of the grandest coffee houses in Europe: column-lined halls, painted ceilings, chandeliers, billiard rooms, newspapers from everywhere.
Munich around 1900 was a capital of art, and painters, writers and musicians filled cafés like this one. Thomas Mann, who lived here for decades, opened one of his early stories with two words that every Münchner knows: München leuchtete, Munich was shining. The story goes that members of the circle which later became the Blue Rider, Kandinsky, Franz Marc and their friends, met at the Luitpold's tables. Imagine it: modern art being argued into existence over strudel.
In 1944, bombs destroyed the palace and the café. After the war it reopened in a much smaller form, and the great halls were gone for good. Its present look, with the glass-roofed palm garden, comes from a modern renovation. Like so much of Munich, it is a careful reconstruction of a memory, and none the worse for that.
So here is where this walk ends: with cake. Think back over the route. Salt rolled in under the Isartor and made a city. Monks brewed beer, dukes made it pure, kings sold off wheat beer, market women defended their radishes, an innkeeper outvoted a prince... and a baker's mistake, if you believe the legend, gave the world a pretzel. In Munich, food is not a side dish to history. It is history. Order a slice of Prinzregententorte, the layered chocolate cake named after Luitpold himself, and let this be your final stop.