Au-Haidhausen

This guide to Au-Haidhausen in Munich traces the district once nicknamed the Scherbenviertel, the shattered glass quarter, a crowded home to day laborers and brickmakers after Munich absorbed the village in 1854. It follows the population boom that packed tens of thousands into its densest blocks, and the twist after Germany's 1870-71 war with France, when planners dressed the poor district in a grid of streets named for battles most residents never fought. Best heard walking one of those French-named avenues, from the square outward.