Hofbräuhaus am Platzl

What it is

Hofbräuhaus am Platzl is a working beer hall on a small square behind the Munich residence, and it is a tavern rather than a museum: nothing inside is roped off, and everyone in the room is there to eat and drink. It was founded on 27 September 1589 by Duke Wilhelm V, and for its first two centuries it existed only to supply beer to the Bavarian court. Its most repeated story belongs to the Thirty Years' War: when Swedish troops besieged Munich on 17 May 1632, the city bought itself out of plunder with tribute that included 23,168 litres of Hofbräu beer. King Ludwig I opened the house to the public in 1828 by a decree granting the public service of food and drink, which is the date the tavern proper begins. Rival brewers copied the mark, so "HB" was registered as a trademark in 1879. Brewing on this site ended for good on 22 May 1896; the brewery moved first to Haidhausen, where the Hofbräukeller still stands, and in 1988 out to Riem. The house was rebuilt as a tavern over 1896 and 1897, and the new Schwemme opened on the old brewing floor on 9 February 1897. The building a visitor walks into today is that one, and it is run by Sperger Gaststättenbetrieb OHG at Platzl 9.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

What's inside

The ground floor is the Schwemme, the vaulted hall where the beer was once brewed, now seating up to 1,300 people at long plank tables, some of which have stood here since 1897 and carry generations of initials cut into them. A brass band plays from a stage in the middle of the room. Off the hall, a courtyard holds the Wirtsgarten, a walled beer garden under old chestnut trees around a fountain, with room for about 450. One floor up is the Bräustüberl, quieter and more furnished, with a tiled stove, bay windows over the Platzl, 300 seats indoors and 120 on its terrace; this is the only dining room that takes bookings. Above that the Festsaal runs under a barrel vault nine metres high and holds up to 750 people, but it is an events hall rather than a room a walk-in visitor will see, and the same is true of the Erkerzimmer, the Erkerbar, the Münchner Zimmer and the Wappensaal, all of which are let for private functions. Practical fittings are unglamorous and worth knowing: a lift serves the floors, every floor has an accessible toilet, and every guest room has coat hooks rather than a staffed cloakroom, for which the house accepts no liability. Dogs are allowed. The menu is printed in German and English.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

How long to spend

Allow an hour and a half. That is long enough to find a place at a shared table, order and drink a Maß, eat one dish, and sit through a set from the band, which is the whole of what most visitors come for. Thirty minutes buys a look at the Schwemme from the door and a beer standing up, and it is a thin visit: the room only makes sense once a table has taken you in and the brass has started. Two to three hours is realistic if you arrive with a group, eat a full meal in courses, and stay for the evening music. Build in the queue. Service is not the constraint here so much as seating: the Schwemme and the beer garden have free seating with no host at the door, so at peak times the wait is spent walking the room looking for gaps at tables of ten, and that can take a quarter of an hour on its own before anything is ordered. Ordering itself is fast once you are seated. For an itinerary, the sensible place for the Hofbräuhaus is at the end of a day of walking rather than squeezed between two sights, because leaving on schedule is the part visitors find hardest.

Checked 2026-08-26

Season and crowds

The house is open every day of the year from 11.00 to midnight. There is no weekly closing day and no midday break, which makes it one of the few places in the old town that can absorb an awkward hour in the middle of the afternoon. The kitchen keeps shorter hours than the room: the operator gives the kitchen as 12.00 to 22.00 on weekdays and 11.30 to 22.00 at weekends and on public holidays, with Weißwurst, Obazda and Leberkäs served from 11.00, and states that the last serving of the evening is 23.30. Live music is daily except on the two silent holidays, Good Friday and All Saints' Day, when no bands play. The operator's own pages give slightly different evening times for the Schwemme: the FAQ says 12.00 to 16.00 and 18.00 to 23.30, while the music page says lunchtime 12.00 to 16.00 and evenings 18.00 to 23.00. In the Bräustüberl upstairs, music runs Tuesday to Saturday from 18.00 to 22.00. The quietest stretch is between the lunch band and the evening one, roughly 16.00 to 18.00, when a table is easy to find. From about 19.00 the ground floor fills and stays full.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

Tickets

There is no admission charge and no ticket. The Hofbräuhaus is a tavern: you walk in off the Platzl, sit down and pay for what you order. The operator's guidance to visitors asking whether they need to book is simply to come and join in, so nothing has to be bought before arrival. What is paid for is the drink and the food. From the 2026 standard menu, a Maß of Hofbräu Original or Hofbräu Dunkel is 11.60 euro, and a half litre of either is 5.80 euro; a half litre of Münchner Weisse, or of the alcohol-free wheat beer, is 6.10 euro. The seasonal beer and both Radler variants are 11.60 euro the litre, and a Russ'n is 12.20 euro. Among the food, main dishes in the vegetarian and vegan section run to 15.90 euro, a bread basket is 4.50 euro and a pretzel 2.10 euro. The menu states that all prices include service and VAT, so nothing is added at the end. All major credit cards are accepted. The house also sells its own beer tokens, each worth one litre, and gives regulars an eleventh token free with ten bought. Alcohol is served from the age of eighteen.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

Getting there

The address is Platzl 9, 80331 Munich, a short walk east of Marienplatz in the pedestrian old town. No car is needed, and the operator recommends public transport first. Every S-Bahn line and the U3 and U6 underground lines serve Marienplatz, and Isartor is the other useful stop; from either it is about 500 metres on foot. From the airport, the S1 and S8 reach Marienplatz directly, so the whole journey is one train and a walk. If you do drive, the operator points at the Hofbräuhaus multi-storey car park, entered at Thomas-Wimmer-Ring 9a, 80539 Munich, which has more than 500 spaces including 16 marked bays for electric vehicles with charging points. Coaches cannot stop at the door; the operator directs them to the parking spaces on the Altstadtring, and travel groups are asked to write ahead by email rather than simply arriving. Taxis and rental e-scooters stand directly outside the building, which matters more on the way out than on the way in, since the walk back through the old town is easy in daylight and less obvious at midnight. There is no luggage storage on the premises, so arriving straight from a station with bags is a poor plan.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

What to watch out for

The seating rule is the thing most visitors get wrong. In the Schwemme and the Wirtsgarten there are no reservations at all: tables seat ten, strangers share them, and you find a gap and ask. Only the Bräustüberl on the second floor takes bookings, and only for parties of four or more, so a couple who want a guaranteed table have no way to arrange one. Some tables in the hall are Stammtische kept for named regulars and are marked as such; sitting at one is the local faux pas. The brewery is not in the building. Brewing stopped here in 1896 and Hofbräu has been in Riem since 1988, so a brewery tour is somewhere else entirely, and the house runs no beer tastings. Guided tours of the Hofbräuhaus itself are run by the city of Munich, not by the tavern. Other refusals worth knowing before you arrive: you may not bring your own food into the beer garden, there is no gluten-free beer, there are no guest rooms, and Oktoberfest vouchers are not redeemable here — the Hofbräuhaus tent on the Theresienwiese is booked separately. Smoking is confined to the outdoor areas. Vegetarian and vegan dishes are on the standard menu.

Checked 2026-08-26

Photography

The Schwemme is a dark room with bright ceiling vaults, and that contrast defeats most phone cameras: pointed at the painted arches the tables go black, pointed at the tables the ceiling blows out. The workable frame is taken from a seat, looking along a table towards the band stage, which puts warm foreground light and the vault in the same exposure. Expect to steady the phone on the table rather than trust a handheld shot, because the room is dim enough that anything moving smears. The best natural light is in the Wirtsgarten in the early afternoon, when sun comes through the chestnut leaves onto the fountain and the courtyard walls, and in the Bräustüberl's bay windows, which look down on the Platzl and give a clean daylight portrait seat. Two subjects are worth deliberate attention. The tabletops in the Schwemme carry a century of initials cut into the wood, and a close overhead frame of one of them says more about the place than another picture of the hall. The other is the band, best shot from a table at the side rather than head-on from the floor. Everyone else is eating. Frame around the other tables rather than across them, and ask before photographing the people sharing yours.

Checked 2026-08-26

Where it is

• 1 hr 30 min

  4 min walk

  Spielzeugmuseum

  • High
  • Museum
• 1 hr 30 min

  4 min walk

  Beer and Oktoberfest Museum

  • Must see
  • Museum
• 45 min

  4 min walk

  Residenz Theatre

  • Notable
  • Historic monument

External links

• View on Wikidata