Praterinsel: Munich's Vienna in the Middle of the River
Why is it significant?
Stop on the footbridge and lean on the railing: below you the Isar rushes past, green and fast, breaking white over a weir. Ahead lies a long island of trees and old brick buildings, with water on both sides. You are standing on one of the few islands of this restless river.
Key Facts
| Place | Praterinsel: Munich's Vienna in the Middle of the River |
|---|---|
| Address | Praterinsel 3, 80538 München, Germany |
| Geo Coordinates | 48.13620, 11.59030 |
| Part of Walk | River and Meadow: Munich's Isar, the Angel of Peace & the English Garden |
| Generated | Generated |
Stop on the footbridge and lean on the railing: below you the Isar rushes past, green and fast, breaking white over a weir. Ahead lies a long island of trees and old brick buildings, with water on both sides. You are standing on one of the few islands of this restless river.
The island's name, Praterinsel, is a little joke about Vienna. In the early 1800s an innkeeper opened a pleasure garden here, with music, dancing and refreshments, and he borrowed the name of the famous Prater park in the Austrian capital. Later the island turned industrious: for much of the twentieth century a liqueur distillery worked here. Now its old halls are used for art and events, and one of its villas has housed the Alpine Museum of the German Alpine Club since 1911.
That museum is in the right place, because this river is a mountain river. The Isar rises in the Karwendel range in Tyrol and runs some three hundred kilometres to the Danube. It carries meltwater and gravel, and on a clear day the water has that milky, cold green colour of the high Alps. In summer, rafts loaded with musicians and beer still float down towards Munich from upstream, a tradition from the days when timber travelled by water.
For a century the city tried to tame its river, straightening it into a stone channel. Then, from 2000 to 2011, Munich did something brave: in the Isar Plan, it tore out long stretches of concrete south of the old town and gave the river back its gravel banks, shallows and islands. Flood protection improved, and so did life on the banks. Today, on a hot afternoon, thousands of people sunbathe, swim and grill along the water.
Listen for a moment, and you will notice that the city noise fades under the sound of the weir. Now cross back to the eastern bank and climb the slope towards the grand building with the arches and the golden mosaics, crowning the high bank above the river.