BMW Headquarters (BMW Tower)
Four engine cylinders hovering above the ground — this tower was built to look exactly like what BMW makes.
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Austrian architect Karl Schwanzer designed the 101-metre tower (built 1968–72) so its exterior mimics four car-engine cylinders, each one suspended from a central core rather than resting on the ground. The campus sits beside the Olympiapark; the tower has been a protected historic building since 1999 and appeared in the 1975 film Rollerball with its branding replaced by large orange circles.
What to look for
- The gap at ground level — the four cylinder shafts hang from a central support tower and do not touch the ground
- A horizontal mold bisecting each cylinder's facade exactly at its midpoint
- The adjacent BMW Museum building, designed by Schwanzer to represent the cylinder head that completes the engine metaphor.
BMW Welt, which showcases current BMW cars, opened directly across the road in October 2007 and is part of the same walkable campus as the Museum.
BMW Headquarters (BMW Tower) 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.