BMW Headquarters and Museum

Founded in 1913, BMW started building airplane engines in 1917. In 1923, BMW started building motorbikes and eventually in 1928 they started with the production of cars.
Shortly after the Second World War, BMW's factories were dismantled by the Allied Forces and the company was only allowed to manufacture household utensils and bycicles.
In 1950 BMW returned to the production of cars. After a slow start, the company focused on luxury cars, becoming one of the most admired carmakers in the world.

The main attraction for the hundreds of thousands of visitors that visit BMW yearly is the four-cilinder BMW-tower and the bowl-shaped BMW-museum next to it.
The museum displays the technical development of the car and motorcycles, together with the history of BMW itself. Many old cars and motorcycles are on display and there are also films and videos on display in English.
The highlight is the spectacular cinemascope show on automobile history. The museum is now temporarily in a nearby building due to renovations to the original museum building.

The main building itself, officially called the BMW-verwaltungsgebäude (BMW administrative building), was designed by the Viennese architect K. Schwarzer after a four-cylinder engine and was completed in 1972, just before the olympics took place in Munich.