Escaping the City Without Leaving

When is a neighborhood in the center of town not quite in the center of town? When it’s Lehel, the neighborhood that wraps around the East side of the altstadt. I used to think it amounted to only the postage stamp blocks surrounding St. Anna church, but it turns out that it drapes the entire East side of the city. I love this area as you can easily walk into the Alstsadt, but each of the sections of the neighborhood have its own personality – from North Lehel (North of Prinzregentenstrasse), mid-Lehel (between Maximillianstrasse and Prinzregentenstrasse, and the south side from Maximillianstrasse. Lehel is said to be the city’s oldest neighborhood outside of the Altsatdt, also often referred to as Vorstadt – or urban neighborhood. As the neighborhood includes the Bayerisches National Museum, the Haus der Kunst, and the upscale shopping street of Maximillianstrasse, it is also quite culturally rich. But what I love most about this neighborhood is how you leave the main boulevards and you feel immediately like you’ve exited the center of the city and relish the true heart of a residential neighborhood.