Müller'sches Volksbad: A Palace for Washing
Why is it significant?
Stand on the riverbank by the Ludwigsbrücke and look at the building with the copper domes and the tall tower: it could pass for a church, a town hall, or the palace of a minor prince. It is none of these.
Key Facts
| Place | Müller'sches Volksbad: A Palace for Washing |
|---|---|
| Address | Rosenheimer Straße 1, 81667 München, Germany |
| Geo Coordinates | 48.13230, 11.58840 |
| Part of Walk | River and Meadow: Munich's Isar, the Angel of Peace & the English Garden |
| Generated | Generated |
Stand on the riverbank by the Ludwigsbrücke and look at the building with the copper domes and the tall tower: it could pass for a church, a town hall, or the palace of a minor prince. It is none of these. Behind those walls are swimming pools, steam rooms and, once, rows of bathtubs for people who had none at home.
The Müller'sches Volksbad, the People's Bath, opened in 1901. It is named after Karl Müller, an engineer who gave a large part of his fortune to the city on one condition: that it build a bath for the working people of Munich. At the time, most flats in this crowded part of town had no bathroom at all. People washed at a basin in the kitchen, or went without.
The architect Carl Hocheder took the brief and wildly overdelivered. Inside, the great pool lies under a barrel vault like a Roman basilica, the smaller one under a dome, and the walls bloom with the flowing lines and plant ornament of Jugendstil, the German Art Nouveau. There is even a Roman-Irish steam bath, with warm marble benches and a cold plunge. When it opened, it was one of the most lavish public baths in Europe... and it was built for the poor.
In its early decades, men and women bathed separately, and the cheap tubs and showers downstairs were as important as the pools. Today the building is still a working public bath, and swimming lengths here feels a little like swimming through a cathedral.
Why build it here, right on the riverbank? Because Munich has always lived with the Isar, the wild green river that comes down from the Alps. This walk follows it north, over islands and bridges, into the great park that the river feeds. Now head north along the riverside path on this eastern bank, and cross the little footbridge onto the island in the middle of the Isar.