Chinesischer Turm

The five-story wooden pagoda rises eighty-two feet above the gravel paths of the Englischer Garten. Joseph Frey built the original structure in seventeen eighty-nine, modeling it after the Great Pagoda at Kew Gardens in London. A fire gutted the wooden frame in nineteen forty-four during an air raid, but the city rebuilt it in its original image five years later. Today, beer drinkers crowd the long benches surrounding the base, keeping a tradition that started when the tower first opened to the public.