Altstadt-Lehel

Altstadt and Lehel are districts of the German city of Munich. Together they form the first borough of the city: Altstadt-Lehel.

The borough covers the historical area of Altstadt (as defined by the Altstadtring) and the Lehel area, which is attached to Altstadt via the north east. It also covers the Isar in the east and the Englischer Garten as well as Prinzregentenstraße, bordering it in the north.

Since the town extension via Ludwig the Bavarian lasting from 1285 until 1347, Altstadt consisted of four quarters and an open locale:

"(The) Lehel" (with locals, the article will never be missing) is regarded "the oldest suburb of Munich"; it was, however, officially incorporated into the city as of 1724 only.

Lehel has become another area for the arts next to the Kunstareal: The State Museum of Ethnology in Maximilianstraße is the second largest collection in Germany of artifacts and objects from outside Europe, while the Bavarian National Museum and the adjoining State Archeological Collections in Prinzregentenstrasse rank among Europe's major art and cultural history museums. The nearby Schackgalerie is an important gallery of German 19th-century paintings.

The quarter, having been one of Munich's surrounding poor houses in times of old, began to turn into today's much sought-after and very expensive residential area beginning with the construction of the first Wilhelminian style apartment houses at the turn of the 20th century and latest after the start of heavy gentrification during the 1980s.

There are many theories for the origin of the name of this area.

The more commonly represented indicates to a connection with the name "Lohe", Central and Upper German for a more or less dwindling alluvial forest and/or a light grove intermingled with shrubbing/coppice. Growing predominantly on a ground made up of gravel with heath upon it, it used to be found all around historic Munich from the west to the river Isar in the north-east on the Munich gravel plain. It meets with many locations and its remainders can still be found in the spot from Aubing to Eching. Many places' names in the area still refer to these forests, for example Auginger Lohe. Angerlohe, Allacher Lohe, Lohhof or Keferloh. Here is the consideration, that the pharyngeally pronounced word Lohe, thus perhaps Loche, adjusted and led Orthography in the course of time for other own place names, for example Lochham or Lochhausen. Hereafter, the Bavarian diminutive Löhel, modernly, if even somewhat crudely spelled "Lehel", refers to a small bit of said alluvial forest. In fact, Lehel used to be an "island" in a geographical sense, as it was surrounded by the river Isar at one side and brooks running alongside and towards the river at the others.

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