Who ruled Munich?

Munich lies on the river Isar on the gravel plain of southern Bavaria, about 50 kilometres north of the Alps. It began as a medieval toll and market town on the salt road from the Alpine mines and owes its rise almost entirely to one family, the Wittelsbachs, who ruled Bavaria from 1180 to 1918 and made Munich their seat. That long royal patronage gave the city its churches, palaces and museums. In the twentieth century it gained a darker reputation as the birthplace of the Nazi movement, before rebuilding itself as one of Germany's wealthiest cities.

The area was settled long before the city existed, and its name comes from the monks (Mönche in German) who are thought to have had a small settlement nearby. The town itself dates from 1158, when Henry the Lion, Duke of Saxony and Bavaria, destroyed a rival bridge at Föhring and moved the river crossing, with its lucrative salt tolls, to Munich; 14 June 1158 is counted as the founding date. After Henry's fall the emperor gave Bavaria to Otto of Wittelsbach in 1180, and in 1255, when the duchy was divided, Munich became the residence of the dukes of Upper Bavaria. When Bavaria was reunited in 1506 it became the capital of the whole duchy within the Holy Roman Empire.

The late Gothic Frauenkirche, whose twin domed towers became the city's symbol, was completed in the 1480s. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Munich was a stronghold of the Catholic Counter-Reformation, with a large Jesuit church and college. During the Thirty Years' War Duke Maximilian I won the rank of Elector in 1623, but in 1632 the Swedish army of Gustavus Adolphus occupied the city, and plague followed two years later.

Bavaria's alliance with Napoleon brought it the title of kingdom in 1806, with Munich as capital. The wedding celebrations of Crown Prince Ludwig in October 1810 began the tradition of the Oktoberfest. As King Ludwig I (1825 to 1848) he turned Munich into a showcase of classical architecture and art, with grand avenues, museums and the university moved from Landshut. In 1871 Bavaria joined the new German Empire, keeping its own king.

The end of the First World War brought revolution: the king fled in November 1918, and a short-lived Soviet republic was crushed by government and Freikorps troops in May 1919. In this turbulent atmosphere Adolf Hitler built up the Nazi Party in Munich's beer halls, and in November 1923 he attempted a coup, the Beer Hall Putsch, which police stopped near the Feldherrnhalle. After 1933 the regime of Nazi Germany called Munich the "capital of the movement", and one of the first concentration camps was opened at nearby Dachau. Here in September 1938 Germany, Italy, Britain and France signed the Munich Agreement, allowing Hitler to annex part of Czechoslovakia. The White Rose student resistance group was active at the university until its leaders were arrested and executed in 1943.

Allied bombing destroyed much of the city, including most of the old centre, during the Second World War. Munich lay in the American occupation zone and rebuilt its historic core largely in its old form. The 1972 Olympic Games were overshadowed by the murder of eleven Israeli team members by Palestinian militants. Today Munich has about 1.5 million inhabitants, the third-largest city in Germany, and is home to major industrial, insurance and technology companies.