Deutsches Theater München

Opened in September 1896 and nicknamed the fairy palace, the house on the Schwanthalerstraße was built by Alexander Blum, Joseph Rank and Karl Stohr in a florid neoclassical baroque, with an auditorium of some 1,680 seats and a Silbersaal beneath it. Karl Valentin worked here; so, briefly, did Josephine Baker. Bombing destroyed the building on 9 March 1943 and it reopened, rebuilt, in 1951; the interiors were recast in pop-art colours between 1976 and 1982. From the 1960s the programme widened from vaudeville and comedy to operetta, ballet, drama and musicals, and the theatre became the largest German stage given over to visiting productions. A long restoration sent the company to a marquee near the Allianz Arena until July 2013, when it returned to Munich's city centre.