Maximilianstraße

This guide to Maximilianstraße in Munich starts with King Maximilian II's 1850 demand for a street built in a style that had never existed before, and the young architect, Friedrich Bürklein, he tasked with inventing one from scratch. It follows the street toward its dramatic endpoint on the far bank of the Isar, a civic building meant to train young men for public service, and the unstable ground and wartime damage that shaped its long construction. Walk the boulevard today and watch for how far its storefronts have drifted from the king's original civic dream.