BMW Welt

This guide to BMW Welt in Munich follows the ritual that has drawn American buyers here since 2007: ordering a car back home, then flying in to watch it rotate into view on a glass platform inside architect Wolf D. Prix's double-cone hall. You'll hear what Prix wanted the building to be beyond a showroom, and how the four-year construction and its roughly two-hundred-million-dollar cost compare with what actually walked through the doors once it opened. Look up at the twin funnels overhead, glass catching light off the Olympic Park outside.