Deutsches Museum

The Deutsches Museum has filled its own island in the Isar since Oskar von Miller founded it in 1903 - one of the largest science and technology museums on earth, and still the most physical of them. Its legend rests on immersion: the high-voltage hall stages genuine lightning around a Faraday cage with a keeper sitting calmly inside, and the halls hold first-rank originals - the U1 submarine of 1906, pioneering aircraft, engines, instruments and laboratory benches where modern science happened. A sweeping modernisation reopened nineteen exhibitions in 2022, from aviation to musical instruments, while the live demonstrations that generations of Munich schoolchildren remember carry on to timetable. It is less a museum than a city of machines - and like a city, it cannot be finished in a day.

What you actually see

• The musical instruments hall - centuries of keyboards, strings and synthesizers, freshly redisplayed.
• The high-voltage show - staged lightning crackling around a Faraday cage.
• The aviation halls - pioneer aircraft from fabric wings to jets.
• The U1 submarine - the 1906 boat parked among the marine exhibits.

When to go

Year-round and ideal in bad weather - which means school holidays and wet weekends are the crush. Weekday mornings are calmest; check the demonstration timetable on arrival and plan around it.

Honest expectations

It is vast - pick three or four sections and accept defeat on the rest. Parts remain closed as the long renovation continues - including the famous walk-through mine, shut until around 2028 - and the beloved demonstrations run in German first with English summaries. Kids tend to need dragging out; adults too.

Nearby

The Isar embankments, Marienplatz and the old town, and the Ludwigsbrucke riverside.