Craft guide
ORBISBOOKSELLERS & STATIONERS IN MUNICH8 stores · curated ORBIS register
Buchhandlung Lentner combines Munich bookshops with an online catalogue, allowing readers to order books for collection at a branch. The bookseller also provides separate shop contacts for requests, giving readers a way to ask about a particular title. Glatteis specialises in crime fiction in the Gärtnerplatzviertel, with regional Alpine mysteries and author readings among its offers.
Altstadt (Kornmarkt)
Clemens Bellut runs this independent bookshop on the Kornmarkt, stocking curated philosophy, poetry, art and science titles rather than mass-market fiction. The shop doubles as a space for readings and conversation and publishes a twice-yearly literary journal, Die Wiederholung.
Best for Philosophy, poetry and arts titles
Munich / Germany
Buchhandlung Lentner has sold books in Munich for over 328 years and runs its online catalogue of some four million titles alongside branches at Marienplatz, in Haidhausen and in Neubiberg. Customers can order online for next-day collection, and each shop lists its own phone line for special book requests.
Best for Bookshop, click-and-collect
Gärtnerplatzviertel
Munich's dedicated crime-fiction bookshop, at Corneliusstrasse 31 in the Gartnerplatzviertel; operating since 2000, it stocks mystery and crime titles, plus regional Alpine crime fiction, and regularly hosts author readings.
Best for A specialist crime-fiction bookshop.
Glatteis is a specialist crime-fiction bookshop in Munich's Gartnerplatzviertel, at Corneliusstrasse 31, near the corner of Baaderstrasse. The shop has been operating under this name since 2000 and focuses exclusively on crime and mystery fiction, from Alpine regional whodunits to short-story collections, alongside related cookbooks, comics, and calendars. It regularly hosts author readings, often paired with wine and bread, including charity events tied to World Book Day. A 2008 obituary credits Gabriele Fauser as the shop's founder; the business appears to have continued operating under new stewardship since her death.
Altstadt
This Marienplatz café sits inside a branch of Hugendubel, the German bookstore chain that has traded since 1893 and remains family-run five generations later. Alongside books, it offers coffee, reading areas, and tolino e-readers.
Best for Coffee, books and reading nooks at Marienplatz
This Marienplatz café operates inside a branch of Hugendubel, the German bookstore chain founded in 1893 and still, more than 130 years later, run by the same family — currently siblings Nina and Maximilian Hugendubel in its fifth generation. The company operates more than 100 branches across Germany with roughly 1,600 employees, selling books, eBooks, audiobooks, toys, calendars, stationery, and film alongside its tolino e-readers. That last detail is a real distinguishing fact rather than a footnote: Hugendubel co-founded the tolino alliance, a shared German digital-reading platform the company describes as internationally unique, giving customers access to more than three million eBook titles through a device sold at its own counters. The Marienplatz café slots into that broader identity as the pause button on a bookstore visit — a coffee and a reading area inside a business built, at its core, on getting people to sit down with a book rather than browse and leave. It's not a standalone specialty roaster chasing single-origin lots; it's a café attached to one of Germany's oldest and largest family booksellers, where the draw is the shelves as much as the cup, and where the till behind the counter is backed by a company old enough to have outlasted most of its original competitors twice over.
Munich
An independent children’s book, toy and craft-supply shop focused on durable and sustainable products. A Schwabing institution operating since 1956.
Best for Durable, sustainable children's books, toys, and craft supplies since 1956
Kunst und Spiel was founded by Michael Peter, who began not with a shop but with an exhibition space on the third floor of his own apartment building on Georgenstrasse in Munich's Schwabing district. His guiding principle was selective: toys and materials chosen according to pedagogical and ecological criteria drawn from Waldorf education, at a time when mass-produced plastic toys imported from the United States were rapidly displacing wooden and natural-material toys across the German market. The apartment exhibition drew enthusiastic support from people connected to the Waldorf School movement, the Anthroposophical Society, and the Christian Community, and on the strength of that response Peter opened a small ground-floor shop two years later, in September 1956, at Leopoldstrasse 48 -- the address the store still occupies. That continuity makes Kunst und Spiel one of Schwabing's longer-running independent retailers, predating the district's transformation into one of Munich's best-known shopping and nightlife quarters. The shop has held to its founding premise across seven decades: durable, ecologically considered children's books, toys, and craft materials, sold from the same Leopoldstrasse address it moved into shortly after opening, at a moment when that emphasis on natural materials ran directly against, rather than with, the prevailing toy-industry trend.
Altstadt
Trading since 1698, when Johann Hibler founded the shop later renamed for Joseph Lentner, who took it over in 1784, this Munich bookstore was named a royal Bavarian court supplier in 1897 and today occupies the ground floor of the Neues Rathaus at Marienplatz, specializing in Bavarica, art and philosophy.
Best for A historic Munich bookshop and former royal purveyor since 1698
Lentner traces its trading history to 1698, when Johann Hibler opened a bookshop in Munich. Joseph Lentner took over the firm in 1784 and gave it the name it still carries. The business later passed to Ernst Siegfried Stahl, under whose ownership the shop received an appointment in 1897 as königlich-bayerischer Hoflieferant — royal Bavarian court supplier — periodically furnishing the Wittelsbach royal house with new reading material. That court connection makes Lentner one of the oldest continuously trading bookshops in what was the Kingdom of Bavaria, and it is documented as the oldest surviving bookstore in Old Bavaria. The shop today occupies historic rooms on the ground floor of Munich's Neues Rathaus (New Town Hall) at Marienplatz 8, on Weinstraße. Its current stock is built around Bavarica — books on Munich and Bavarian history, culture and politics — alongside philosophy, art, theology, and facsimile reproductions of medieval illuminated manuscripts and rare book art, a specialty that connects it to the antiquarian side of its centuries-long trade.
Altstadt
Independent Munich bookshop at Rumfordstrasse 48, run by Regina Moths since 1994; curates fiction, art, design, and nonfiction with no bestseller racks, and hosts readings and exhibitions.
Best for Carefully selected literary fiction and nonfiction
Literatur Moths is an independent bookshop at Rumfordstrasse 48 in Munich, near the Isartor, run by owner Regina Moths since 1994. Moths describes her shop less as a conventional retailer than as a changing backdrop for books, graphics, and events, curating a selection she calls 'finely sieved' rather than stocking mass-market bestsellers. The inventory is organized into idiosyncratic sections spanning novels and poetry, art and history, design and graphics, comics and graphic novels, and general nonfiction. Beyond selling books, the shop functions as a small cultural venue, hosting author readings, exhibitions, and literary events. It is regularly cited by local guides as among Munich's most distinctive bookshops, credited for its window displays and hands-on staff recommendations.
Maxvorstadt
Munich independent English-language bookshop in the university quarter since 1985 — 10,000 titles and a reading cafe.
Best for English-language books in Munich's university quarter
Words' Worth opened in 1985 as an independent English-language bookshop in Munich's Maxvorstadt district, near the Neue Pinakothek and at the heart of the university quarter. Located at Schelling Strasse 3 within the humanities building of Ludwig Maximilian University (LMU), it is accessible via U-Bahn lines 3 or 6 (Universität stop). The shop maintains approximately 10,000 titles arranged across fiction and non-fiction sections. The fiction section emphasizes contemporary and classic literature from the UK, USA, and other English-speaking countries with equal weight. The non-fiction collection focuses on literary history, music, philosophy, biographies, and related subjects. Words' Worth features an integrated café serving a variety of beverages and light snacks, creating an ideal space for leisurely browsing and reading. The bookshop regularly hosts literary readings and other literary events, fostering a community of English-language readers and writers in Munich.
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