BMW Welt, the BMW Museum and the four-cylinder tower: what's free, what costs, and what's worth your time.
SHORT ON TIME? BMW Welt - 7 things to know before you go
Motorhead or not, you won’t fail to be impressed by BMW’s brontosaurus-sized footprint on the Munich landscape.
And why shouldn’t a glorified car dealership become one of the city’s big tourist draws? BMW does stand for Bayerische Motoren Werke (Bavarian Motor Works), don’t you know. These days BMW Welt (BMW World) pulls in more than two million visitors a year, which is a lot of people looking at cars they mostly can’t afford. I’m one of them.
GRAND DESIGN: BMW Welt on the left, the "four-cylinder" headquarters behind and the silver bowl of the museum at its feet. The road in front is the Mittlerer Ring.
Although I can hardly tell the difference between a steering wheel and a sump gasket, my visit had me dreaming of tearing down the Autobahn in one of their finely made machines. Fair warning, it’s catching.
BMW’s Munich "campus", right next to the Olympic Park, has four parts:
BMW started life in Munich in 1916 making engines for aeroplanes, not cars. Then the First World War ended, the Treaty of Versailles banned Germany from building aircraft engines in 1919, and the company had to find something else to bolt its engines into. Motorbikes came first, cars after that. Not a bad plan B.
You’ll hear everywhere that the blue and white badge is a propeller spinning against the sky, a nod to those aircraft days. Lovely story, and I’ve told it myself, but BMW says it’s a myth. It comes from a 1929 advert that showed the badge on a spinning propeller. The real roundel goes back to 1917 and is borrowed from Rapp Motorenwerke, the firm BMW grew out of, filled in with the blue and white of the Bavarian flag. They’re even the wrong way round, Bavaria’s colours in reverse.
Cars aside, the architecture of this place is enough to get my heart racing.
DOUBLE CONE: The glass and steel tornado at the south-east corner, with the roof landing on it like a cloud.
You’ll see why after the first glimpse. A glass and steel "double cone" swirls up towards a flat-as-a-pancake roof that’s meant to look like a cloud, itself decked out with solar panels. I’ve heard it was one of the first buildings that simply couldn’t have been designed without computers, and standing under it I can believe it. Nothing is straight.
It was designed by the Viennese firm Coop Himmelb(l)au, led by Wolf D. Prix, and opened in 2007. Planning started back in 2001, when BMW expected about 850,000 visitors a year. They’ve had more than double that every year since. Behind the curves there are around 1,200 rooms, a concert-sized auditorium and about 400 events a year.
THE BRIDGE: Walk over the footbridge from the Olympic Park and this is your view, with the Olympic Tower poking up behind.
Inside the double cone the newest models sit on slowly turning platforms, twirling for you like ballerinas in a jewellery box. Best approach: come at it over the footbridge from the Olympic Park side. You get the double cone and the Olympic Tower in one shot, and then the bridge carries you right up to the building.
BMW Welt is essentially a very posh delivery centre, where the rich-enough come to pick up their new rides. There’s a huge show-off factor and they don’t hide it.
UNDER THE ROOF: Looking down into the main hall. The cars on show change regularly, so don’t expect to see this exact line-up.
Spread through the hall and up into the double cone are BMW’s latest jalopies, along with Mini, Rolls-Royce and BMW M models, plus interactive displays you can touch, spin and twist while learning about the carmaker’s technology. Sit in things. Nobody minds.
The displays are sprinkled with some rather bizarre "auto art". On my visit there was an arrangement of peacock feathers splayed over an upturned car bonnet. I still don’t know what it was about.
AUTO ART: Peacock feathers on a car bonnet. Of course.
The BMW Motorrad section has motorbikes you’re allowed to climb on, which is the closest most of us will get to looking cool on a BMW. Kids love it. So do dads.
EASY RIDER: Go on, get on one.
TIf you're there at the right time, you can sometimes see buyers picking up their new cars in the Premiere area. More than 280,000 customers have picked up a car here since it opened. Each car is prepared on a stage underground and sent up in a glass lift to the Premiere level, where it turns to face its new owner on a rotating platform like a star at a film premiere. A BMW expert walks them through every button, then off they drive down the ramp. You can watch it all from the walkways. It's all a bit silly, but I'd love to have the cash to be able to drive down that ramp one day myself!
PREMIERE: New cars wait on the curved Premiere deck for their owners. Watch from the walkways.
There’s a big shop (models, books, clothing, even teddy bears) and plenty to eat. Cooper’s Garden by Käfer is the easy daytime option, the Biker’s Lodge does snacks, and if you’ve just collected your M5 there’s fine dining at THE CLOUD by Käfer in the evenings.
The big silver "salad bowl" across the road is the BMW Museum. It first opened in 1973, was rebuilt and reopened in June 2008, and takes you through more than 100 years of BMW: cars, motorbikes, engines, racing and design, plus the odd aircraft engine from the days when BMW made those. There isn’t a single window in the bowl, which is about 40 metres across, and inside you wind your way round on a spiralling ramp meant to feel like the road carrying on indoors. There are about 120 exhibits on show.
Unlike BMW Welt, this bit costs money (prices below). For car fans it’s the main event. For the rest of us, it’s still a good couple of hours.
PURE GROOVINESS: The 1950s Isetta "bubble car", my favourite thing in the building.
My favourites were the dainty 1950s Isetta "bubble car", which you get into through a door in the front (yes, the whole front opens), and the downright sexy red M1 Homage concept car, a tribute to BMW’s 1970s M1 supercar, which was on show when I visited.
HOT WHEELS: The M1 Homage concept. This ride needs no pimping.
Keep an eye out for the Art Cars too. Since 1975 BMW has handed cars over to artists to paint, and the list runs from Alexander Calder and Andy Warhol to Roy Lichtenstein. The one I caught was A.R. Penck’s Z1, scribbled all over like a cave wall.
ART CAR: A.R. Penck’s Z1. Exhibits rotate, so you may see a different one.
Older stuff is just as good. The 1933 BMW 303 was the first BMW car with the twin-kidney grille, the snout every BMW still wears today.
KIDNEYS: The 1933 BMW 303, where the famous grille started.
SLICK: The four-cylinder tower, with the museum’s bowl at the bottom right.
This is one very funky office block. BMW’s global headquarters, the Vierzylinder (four-cylinder), was built between 1968 and 1972 to be ready for the Munich Olympics and officially opened in 1973. Austrian architect Karl Schwanzer designed it, and the museum next door.
The four round towers don’t stand on the ground. They hang from a central core, and the floors were built at ground level and then hauled up into place. It tops out at 101m and was declared a historic monument in 1999. You can’t go in, but you don’t need to. It looks best from outside anyway, especially from the top of the Olympiaberg across the road.
The real work gets done in the factory behind the museum, BMW’s main plant, which has been building cars on this spot since the 1950s. It turns out up to about 1,000 cars a day, mostly 3 Series and 4 Series.
It’s in the middle of a big change. The engine-making that used to go on here has moved to Hams Hall in England and Steyr in Austria, and a big chunk of the site has been rebuilt for the new all-electric Neue Klasse. Electric i3 saloons started rolling off the line in 2026, and from the end of 2027 BMW says Munich will build electric cars only.
You can tour the plant, but only by booking, through BMW Welt. With so much building work going on, check what tours are running before you plan your day around one, and book well ahead in summer.
There’s a side to this story you won’t find in the shiny bits. From 1933 BMW went back to building aircraft engines, secretly at first, for the Nazis’ rearmament drive, and the factory on Lerchenauer Straße became the biggest employer in Munich. During the war it relied on thousands of forced labourers. By the end it was a favourite target for Allied bombers, and in October 1945 the Americans ordered what was left of the plant to be taken apart.
A couple of kilometres north, at Knorrstraße 148, the Nazis built a camp in 1941 where Munich’s Jews were held before being deported. The first transport left that November with 999 people on board, and none of them survived. BMW’s research centre stands on the site now, which isn’t open to the public, but there’s a tree-shaped memorial on the corner of Troppauer Straße and Knorrstraße. If you want the bigger picture of those years, the NS Documentation Centre in town is the place to go.
THE WHOLE LOT: From the Olympiaberg you can see BMW Welt (left), the museum bowl, the four-cylinder tower and the factory roofs stretching off behind.
View BMW Welt in a larger map.
Location: Am Olympiapark 1, about 5km north of the city centre.
Getting there: Take the U3 to Olympiazentrum. BMW Welt is right outside, a couple of minutes’ walk.
BMW Welt opening times: Monday to Saturday 7.30am to midnight, Sundays and public holidays 9am to midnight. The car exhibitions are open 9am to 6pm. It closes 24 to 26 December and 31 December to 1 January.
BMW Welt cost: Free.
BMW Museum opening times: Tuesday to Sunday, 10am to 6pm (last entry 5.30pm). Closed Mondays.
BMW Museum tickets (2026): €17 adults, €9 reduced (students, seniors and others with ID), €38 for a family of up to two adults and three children under 18. Under-10s go free. Tickets are good for five hours. Card only, no cash, so bring a card or book online.
Tours: BMW runs guided tours of BMW Welt, the museum and the plant. Book through the BMW Welt website, where you’ll also find the latest prices.
How long: An hour or so for BMW Welt, another two for the museum. Add the Olympic Park across the road and you’ve got a full day.
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Destination Munich
• Olympic Park and tower - Higher, faster, stronger, better. • Nymphenburg Palace - Summer residence for the big cheese of Bavaria. • Allianz Arena - Home of FC Bayern, out at Fröttmaning on the U6.
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