Past POI - BMW Museum [Munich, Germany]

During our Eastern Europe trip, this was a bit of a surprise stop for me. I knew walking in that it would be a museum dedicated to BMW, but I had no idea how well done it would.

BMW Museum (the salad bowl looking building).

Located in Munich, Germany, is the BMW Museum, which is next to the BMW Welt and BMW Plant and you can take a tour of them all if you like (just make sure to book ahead of time because when we went on the day of, the tickets for all three places were sold out).

The BMW Museum, which was built in 1973, is open Tuesday - Sunday and on public holidays from 10:00am - 6:00pm, is closed on Mondays and costs 10 € per adult in 2015. You will need to pay for parking or you can take local transit to Olympiazentrum station to get here.

There are three parts to the BMW Museum, the permanent exhibition, the special exhibition, and the temporary exhibition. While we were there, we only did the permanent exhibition and I think that was more than enough for me since I wasn't interested in seeing the temporary exhibition which at the time was 'The MINI story'.

The permanent exhibition itself is roughly 4,000 m² and has over 120 pieces of BMW's 90+ year history (founded in 1916). The exhibit itself actually had a lot of very interesting pieces, there is a wall of their motorcycles, a room showing off every generation of the BMW 3 series, a room which had a wide variety of their propeller engines (which if you did not know was their starting point where they made aircraft engines for World War I) and more. Speaking of propeller engines, did you know that their logo is actually based on how a propeller engine when it runs? The colours, blue and white, are the colours of Bavaria.

BMW brands from 1970 and on.

The exhibit is broken down into seven houses and I have written this in the sequence that you will see them in.

The house of design, shows the design philosophy of BMW and their inspirations for their products.

A series of metal balls that move up and down eventually makes a car.

The house of company, shows the history behind BMW, their beginnings and how they got to where they are today.

The house of motorcycle, is a wall of motorcycles spanning several floors that shows the history of their motorcycles.

The house of technology, shows the technology that they have used in the past and what they are using now to make their products. One of the sections is dedicated to just showing off their engines from the beginning and spanning decades to show the changes.

The house of motor sport, is the rooms that show off their racing cars, specifically the ones used for Formula 1 and rally racing.

The house of brand, shows how advertising has changed overtime for BMW.

And finally, the house of series, which in my opinion was the one that I liked the most. It shows off BMW cars that span generations but features them all in one room. For example, they have one where it is just all BMW 3 series from the beginning to now.

All BMW 3 series.

I highly recommend visiting the BMW Museum if you are in Munich and I think that even if you are not a big fan of cars, the photo-ops available and just how well they present their history is well worth the visit.

Come back next Friday for another Past Point of Interest!