Karlstor

This guide to Munich's Karlstor centers on the night of September 15th, 1857, when a stockpile of gunpowder in an ironmonger's shop pressed against the six-hundred-year-old gate tower went off, killing five people and cracking the medieval stone beyond repair. It reaches back to the gate's origins in the 1280s as part of Munich's second ring of walls, first called the Neuhauser Tor, and follows its renaming under elector Karl Theodor in 1791. Look up at the twin towers framing the arch, and consider how many times this gate has had to rise again.