Isar Gate

This guide to Munich's Isar Gate traces a medieval tower from its rise around 1337 as Emperor Ludwig the Bavarian expanded the city walls, through a fresco of his triumph after the Battle of Ampfing, to its wartime shelling and postwar rebuilding. It follows how the city then handed the ruined gate to the memory of comedian Karl Valentin and his partner Liesl Karlstadt, filling it with jokes rather than solemnity. Look up at the clock on the tower's west face before you go inside.