Olympiaturm

What it is

The Olympic Tower is shut. Olympiapark München GmbH closed it on 1 June 2024 for renovation, and it had not reopened when this page was checked on 26 August 2026, so nothing described here can be entered today. What stands at the north edge of the Olympic Park is a concrete television tower 291 metres tall, the tallest structure in Munich. The city council decided in 1964 to build it on the Oberwiesenfeld, the point of the exercise being better radio and television reception for the city rather than a view. Construction began in 1965 to designs by the Munich architect Sebastian Rosenthal, and the finished tower, weighing 52,500 tonnes, opened on 22 February 1968, four years before the Games that made it famous. The 1972 Summer Olympics turned a broadcasting mast into a landmark and it stayed one: by May 2024, the month before the doors closed, roughly 45 million people had ridden the lift to the viewing platforms 190 metres above the ground. The walk to it is still worth making. The shaft is visible from most of the park and from a good part of the city beyond it, and its base is a few minutes from the Olympic Lake, the tented stadium roof and the grass slope of the Olympiaberg.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

What's inside

The tower's attraction was always the two viewing platforms at about 190 metres and the lift ride to them, which took roughly thirty seconds. From there the operator's description is of a panorama over the city, the countryside around it and the line of the Alps to the south. Below the platforms, at 181 metres, sits Restaurant 181, a revolving dining room that completes one turn in 53 minutes so that a seated guest is carried through the full circle without moving. It is run by DO & CO Gastronomie GmbH rather than by the park, and it is closed for the same works. The renovation is not cosmetic, which is why it is taking so long. The operator lists work on the facade and on the building services, fire protection brought up to current standard, replacement of both passenger lifts, and renewal of the sprinkler and ventilation systems along with the heating and water pipes. Replacing the two lifts alone rules out any partial opening: without them there is no way for the public to reach 190 metres. Until that work is finished the tower is a structure to look at from the park, not a place with an interior.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

How long to spend

Twenty minutes, as things stand. That is this guide's own estimate, not a figure the operator publishes, and it covers what is actually available: walking to the foot of the tower, reading the closure notice at the entrance, looking up the shaft, and circling the base for the angles it gives on the stadium roof and the lake. There is no queue, no lift and no platform to budget for. Fitted into a wider walk through the Olympic Park, the tower is a waypoint rather than a stop, and most visitors will pass it in less time than that. When the platforms reopen the arithmetic changes completely. Allow an hour then: the lift itself takes half a minute each way, but a ticket queue, a wait for the car, and the time it takes to work around a circular platform picking out the Frauenkirche, the Allianz Arena and, on a clear day, the Alps, will fill the rest. Add two hours on top if a table at Restaurant 181 is booked, since one revolution of the floor takes 53 minutes and a meal there is not a quick one.

Checked 2026-08-26

Season and crowds

There is no good hour to arrive at a closed tower, so the timing question for now is really about the park around it, which is open and free to walk through. Late afternoon suits it: the low sun rakes across the Olympiaberg and lights the tower shaft from the west, and the lake below is at its calmest. Reopening is the date to watch, and here the operator contradicts itself. The sightseeing page says the tower is expected to reopen to all visitors in the first quarter of 2027, and the machine-readable reopening date embedded in that same page is 31 March 2027. The park overview page, on the same site, says the fourth quarter of 2027. Both statements were live on 26 August 2026 and this guide does not average them; a visitor planning around the tower should treat the whole of 2027 as uncertain and check the operator's page again close to the trip. When it does reopen, the view is worth choosing weather for. The Alps are only visible on clear, dry days with good air, most reliably after a front has passed through, and they are seen from the platform far less often than photographs suggest.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

Tickets

No admission price is recorded here, because the operator does not publish one. The Olympic Tower pages carry no tariff at all while the tower is closed, and the price field behind those pages is empty rather than showing an old figure, so there is no operator-sourced number to quote and this guide will not supply one from elsewhere. Nothing is being sold: there is no ticket desk in operation, no online booking for the platforms, and no timed entry to reserve. Vouchers and gift experiences for the tower, where third-party sellers still list them, are selling access to a building that has been shut since June 2024 and has no confirmed reopening date, which is worth knowing before buying one as a present. The park itself costs nothing to enter and needs no ticket, and the paths past the tower, around the Olympic Lake and up the Olympiaberg are open. When the platforms reopen the operator's own page is the only price worth trusting, and it is the page this guide will read again. Until then, budget nothing for the tower and something for parking, which is the one charge that does apply.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

Getting there

A car is not needed and is the worse option. The operator directs visitors to underground line U3 towards Moosach, stop Olympiazentrum, about a ten-minute walk into the park; tram lines 20 and 21 to Olympiapark West and tram line 27 to Petuelring, both about five minutes away; and city buses 144, which stops at Spiridon-Louis-Ring, Olympiasee and Olympiaberg, 173, which stops at Olympiazentrum, the Olympic Action Sport Centre and Petuelring, and 177 and 178 to Petuelring. Arriving on the S-Bahn, line S1 reaches Moosach for a change to the U3 or U8, and line S8 reaches Marienplatz for the U3. Driving, there is a parking deck at the tower itself. Prices there changed on 1 February 2026 and run 5.00 euro for one hour, 7.00 for two, 9.00 for three, 11.00 for four, 13.00 for five and 15.00 for six, with a daily rate of 15.00 euro; the Parkharfe further west charges 10.00 euro a day. The operator warns that renovation of the Landshuter Allee bridge over Dachauer Straße, running until December, causes delays around the park harp and advises approaching from the north via Georg-Brauchle-Ring. E-scooters may not be ridden or parked in the park.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

What to watch out for

The closure is the thing to get right, and it is easy to get wrong, because the operator's own site is inconsistent about it. The sightseeing page promises the first quarter of 2027; the park overview page promises the fourth quarter of 2027; and a third field, feeding the map pin on those pages, was still saying mid-2026 on 26 August 2026, a date that has already passed. Guidebooks, ticket resellers and map listings that were written before June 2024 are worse still, and several continue to show opening hours and a lift ride as though nothing had changed. Treat any hours or price for this tower that did not come from the operator's page today as wrong. Restaurant 181 is closed with the tower, so a dinner reservation cannot be a fallback plan. The tower is also not a substitute for a wet-weather stop even when open, since the point of it is a view. On the practical side, road access from the east is disrupted by the Landshuter Allee bridge works until December, and e-scooters, a common way to cross the park, are banned from riding and parking inside it.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

Photography

With the platforms shut, the tower is the subject rather than the vantage point, and the Olympic Park gives it several. The Olympiaberg, the rubble hill at the south of the park, is the obvious one: from its top the tower rises behind the tented roof of the Olympic Stadium, and the two together are the picture most people come away with. The east shore of the Olympic Lake offers the tower with its own reflection when the water is still, which it usually is early in the morning. From directly beneath, a wide lens looking straight up the shaft turns the ribbed concrete and the collar of the platform pod into something close to abstract. Light is the decision. The shaft faces the afternoon sun on its western side, so late in the day gives it modelling instead of a flat grey outline, and the hour after sunset gives the strongest result of all, when the tower is lit and the sky still holds some colour behind it. Winter helps, because the bare trees clear the sight lines from the lake, and because the clear cold air that makes the Alps visible also sharpens the tower itself.

Checked 2026-08-26

Where it is

• 1 hr 30 min

  5 min walk

  BMW Welt

  • Must see
  • Museum
• 1 hr 30 min

  6 min walk

  BMW Museum

  • Must see
  • Museum
• 1 hour

  9 min walk

  Olympiapark

  • Must see
  • Nature site

External links

• View on Wikidata