About this place
This plain white building deliberately refuses the grandeur of its surroundings, and that is the point. It occupies the site of the former Palais Barlow, the neoclassical mansion the Nazi Party bought in 1930 and rebuilt as the "Braunes Haus", the "Brown House", its central headquarters near the Koenigsplatz. From here the party administered its growing movement, kept its membership register, and ran its propaganda machine. Adolf Hitler had a study in the building, as did Rudolf Hess, Ernst Roehm and other senior figures, and after 1933 prisoners were held and abused in its cellars. Allied bombing wrecked the mansion, and its ruins were cleared away in 1947. For nearly seventy years the plot stayed empty, an awkward gap the city chose not to fill, until the documentation centre opened here in 2015 as a place of research, learning and honest confrontation with the past.
Key facts
- 1930 year — The Nazi Party bought the Palais Barlow here for its national headquarters
- 2015 year — The documentation centre opened on this empty plot, seventy years after liberation
- 4 floors — The exhibition fills four upper floors and is read from the top down
📍 Brienner Straße 1, 80333, München