Ratskeller: Dining Beneath the Town Hall
Why is it significant?
Find the stairs leading down beneath the neo-Gothic town hall and follow them below the square. Down here the noise of the square disappears, and you walk into a maze of vaulted cellars painted with vines, scrolls and old sayings. This is the Ratskeller, the town hall cellar.
Key Facts
| Place | Ratskeller: Dining Beneath the Town Hall |
|---|---|
| Address | Marienplatz 8, 80331 München, Germany |
| Geo Coordinates | 48.13740, 11.57610 |
| Part of Walk | Salt, Beer and Pretzels: A Food Lover's Walk Through Munich's Old Town |
| Generated | Generated |
Find the stairs leading down beneath the neo-Gothic town hall and follow them below the square. Down here the noise of the square disappears, and you walk into a maze of vaulted cellars painted with vines, scrolls and old sayings.
This is the Ratskeller, the town hall cellar. The New Town Hall above it was built in stages between 1867 and 1908, and the cellar restaurant opened in 1874, along with the first section of the building. The idea comes from the old Hanseatic towns of the north, Bremen and Lübeck, where the council kept its wine in the cellar and sold it to citizens. Munich adopted the tradition, but this being Munich, the wine came to share the vaults with beer.
So what do you order down here? Schweinsbraten, roast pork with a crust that crackles, and a Knödel, the great Bavarian dumpling, to soak up the gravy. Or Obatzda, a spread of ripe soft cheese mashed with butter, onion and paprika, which you smear on a pretzel. The story goes that it was invented in the 1920s by a landlady near Freising, to use up cheese that was getting too ripe. Bavarian cooking is like that: generous, practical, and allergic to waste.
There is something charming about eating in the cellar of the city government. Above your head the city council debates budgets and building permits, and below its feet people are toasting each other with steins. And it is the mayor of Munich who opens the Oktoberfest each September, with the cry O'zapft is, it's tapped, a ritual that began in 1950.
When you climb back up, look at the facade of the town hall itself. It is covered with saints, dukes, dragons and gargoyles, and if you search carefully you will find little animals and figures hidden in the stone. It looks medieval, but it is barely older than the telephone. Now walk around the corner into Dienerstraße, where a shop with royal coats of arms has fed Munich's richest households for three centuries.