STACHUS

Description

Essentials about the Stachus in brief

“It’s like the Stachus” is what people all over Bavaria use to say when all hell breaks loose somewhere. And indeed, the saying reflects all the normal everyday life on Munich’s busiest square. Officially called “Karlsplatz,” the Stachus is Munich’s number one transportation hub, along with the main train station and Marienplatz. Several S-Bahn, U-Bahn, bus and streetcar lines meet here, along with masses of cars, cyclists and pedestrians. After all, the Stachus is the main western entrance to Munich’s pedestrian zone and leads directly into the main shopping miles of Neuhauser Strasse and Kaufingerstrasse. There are also quite a few shopping opportunities below the square in the Stachus Passages. If you don’t feel like shopping, you can simply sit down at the fountain on the Stachus with a snack or an ice cream and enjoy the hustle and bustle in the sun.

The Name “Stachus”

First of all, the origin story of the strange epithet of Karlsplatz should be clarified. On the corner of Sonnenstrasse and Bayerstrasse, where the Kaufhof department store now stands, there was a house in the 18th century that had been owned since 1710 by the Föderl family, who served beer there and in the associated garden. Since 1728 a Mathias Eustachius Föderl, called “Eustachi”, is recorded as the innkeeper. After him the inn received the name “Stachus”, which it kept even after the business was taken over by another family. The name “Stachus” was then transferred from the inn to the square.

The history and architecture of the Stachus

After its creation in 1791, the square was officially called “Neuhauser-Tor-Platz” after the gate located at it. After the Neuhauser Tor was renamed “Karlstor” in honor of the Bavarian Elector Karl Theodor in July 1792, the square was also renamed “Karls-Thor-Platz”. In 1797, Karl Theodor approved the renaming of the square to “Karlsplatz”. Since the Palatine Elector was not particularly interested in Bavaria during the first years of his reign and even wanted to cede the land to Austria in exchange for the Austrian Netherlands, Karl Theodor was extremely unpopular with the people of Munich. No wonder, then, that the locals continued to use the old name “Stachus” (and still do to this day).

Karlsplatz is located on a spot over which the Salt Road ran in the Middle Ages, which Duke Henry the Lion had moved from Föhring to Munich and to which the city owed its existence and prosperity. When the second city wall was built in the second half of the 13th century, a city gate was erected here, which was first mentioned in a document in 1302 and named Neuhauser Tor after the next town to which the road led.

In the 15th century this gate was reinforced and received a front gate with two flanking side towers, which is still preserved today and forms the closure of the square to the east. In the 17th century, a rampart fortification was built around Munich and a bastion was erected on what is now Karlsplatz. In 1791, Elector Karl Theodor ordered the bastion in front of the Neuhauser Tor to be ground down and the approach to the gate to be redesigned.

The round buildings that border the square today were built between 1796 and 1802 and were topped up again at the end of the 19th century. In the process, the inner end buildings, which were located in front of the side towers of the gate, were demolished, so that the Neuhauser Tor, now called Karlstor, became freely visible from the square.

Opposite the Karlstor was the Hotel Königshof, which was demolished in 2019 and a new hotel was built in its place. On the north-western side, the square was initially bordered by the Old Botanical Garden. In 1891, the Palace of Justice was built on this site. On the southwest side, where the Stachus Garden used to be, the Kaufhof department store now stands.

The fountain on the Stachus was established in 1970 in the course of the construction of the Munich S-Bahn. The shopping center located under the square – the Stachus Passagen, the largest underground structure in Europe – and the underground Karlsplatz (Stachus) subway and S-Bahn station were also built during this period.