Bavaria Statue
You can climb a circular staircase inside a 60-foot bronze woman and look out through the slits in her helmet.
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Cast in sections at the Munich foundry of J.B. Stiglmair between 1844 and 1850, this 87-ton figure was the first all-cast-bronze colossus since Classical Antiquity. Ludwig I commissioned it after decades of Bavaria being a battlefield for Napoleon and Austria — he wanted a monument to a unified Bavarian identity. The Hall of Fame colonnade directly behind her was built as a deliberate artistic and architectural pair.
What to look for
- The internal circular staircase that winds all the way up to a platform inside the head — you are inside cast bronze the entire climb
- Four openings in the helmet that frame views over the Theresienwiese and downtown Munich
- The Ruhmeshalle (Hall of Fame) colonnade immediately behind the statue, conceived as one ensemble with it
The statue stands on the Theresienwiese — the same open grounds used for Oktoberfest — so it is easy to combine with that area of the city.
Bavaria Statue is one of 37 sights worth the detour in Munich, all bundled offline in Voyage GO — download the Munich pack and it sits on your map with no signal, filling your travel passport the moment you walk past.
More to see in Munich
- Allianz ArenaThe world's first stadium with a full color-changing exterior — 75,000 seats wrapped in inflated ETFE plastic panels that can change color across the entire facade.
- Deutsches Museum125,000 objects across 50 fields of science and technology — all on a former coal island in the Isar.
- Nymphenburg PalaceAt 632 metres across, this Baroque summer palace is wider than Versailles — and it started as a birth announcement.
- Alte PinakothekThe gallery that taught Europe how to build a museum — then filled it with five centuries of Old Masters.
- FrauenkircheThe twin towers top out at just over 98 meters — Munich caps the entire city at 99 m, so nothing can overtake them on the skyline.
- Englischer GartenA Massachusetts-born American Loyalist, fleeing Britain after the Revolution, drew up plans for what became one of the world's largest urban parks.