This is a city of vices. Start with chocolate

With temptation all around, Adrian Mourby finds that a walk through Munich is as much as flesh can bear

Munich has had a bad press over the years. To my parents' generation it is the place where Chamberlain and Hitler exchanged autographs and for me it is where the Israeli athletes were murdered during the 1972 Olympics. But cities move on, the sun shines and the unofficial capital of southern Germany is a glorious place to be in summer.

Marienplatz is one of those places where everyone agrees to meet because you simply cannot get lost. It is no distance form Frauenkirche, without a doubt the most distinctive church on Munich's skyline with its twin Gothic towers topped with green copper turbans. Marienplatz is the St Mark's Square of Munich. Blue and white flags flutter in the breeze, people surge up from the S-bahn and pile into the Neues Rathaus, with its substantial cellar working like a production line to slake the thirst of Bavaria's beer drinkers.

There is a walk I do most mornings when I am here, leaving Marienplatz by Dienerstrasse and window-shopping through Alois Dallmayr. To be honest, given that Dallmayr's is a cross between Harrods' Food Hall and Thorntons, I often do more than browse. I cruise, ogling the counters, sniffing and salivating, mentally undressing the boxes of chocolates as I pass. Then it's back out again without having spent too many euros on the second great Bavarian vice.

Wandering down Dienerstrasse, past busking string quartets and asparagus stalls, brings you into Max-Joseph-Platz which is home to one of the most regallooking post offices in the world and its near neighbour the Nationaltheater, home to the Bayerische Staatsoper. A powerful grey neo-classical statement, the opera house has recently been emboldened by an enormous illuminated yellow hoop that loops through the portico's eight Corinthian columns. Whether a large yellow hoop really dispels people's prejudice against opera as an élitist form of entertainment is debatable but it is very jolly.

My usual route then takes me down past the Residenz where Wittelsbachs have lived since the 14th century, long before they were kings. Only Ludwig II, bad king and crazy architect, chose not to make his home here, preferring instead to live in fantasy at the Disneyesque folly of Neuschwanstein. By contrast, the Residenz is the embodiment of Renaissance understatement, although its tiny 500-seater theatre designed by François de Cuvilliés is a Rococo riot. Mozart's Idomeneo had its premiere here in 1781.

You can look round the Residenz if you have money and time to spare but on a warm summer's day I prefer to keep on down Dienerstrasse, ignoring the Feldhernhalle - now closed - on my left and taking in instead the ochre-coloured Theatinerkirche, whose monumental façade, designed by De Cuivilliés, is as vast as his theatre is dinky.

Opposite the Theatinerkirche stands the entrance to the Hofgarten, once the Wittelsbachs' back garden but now home to one of my favourite eateries. Luigi Tambosi's is referred to locally as Italy's most northerly café. Its blue parasols nestle under linden trees next to a colonade decorated with preposterous acts of Teutonic heroism painted at the command of Mad King Ludwig's father, sane King Ludwig I. Here it's good to drink beer and snack on wurst or goulash, listen to the bird calls and revel in the neat Baroque hedges that have never in the past 200 years grown any higher than 18 inches.

The afternoon beckons and it's no distance to the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum on Prinzregentenstrasse or the new Pinakothek of Modern Art and Design, the latest of three excellent Bavarian galleries, which opened last year and has been a huge success. Alternatively, if the weather is too good to stay indoors, the Englischer Garten is without a doubt the best place to be if you don't object to joining hundreds of beautiful people lying naked on either side of the Eisbach, a freezing cold stream that comes direct from the Bavarian Alps and helps Munich's sunbathers to cool off.

A more respectable way of taking in nature can be found by taking the tram or bus out to Nymphenburg, the Wittelsbachs' summer residence, 5km to the fashionable west of the city. Nymphenburg was supposed to remind Elector Ferdinand's wife, Henrietta Adelaide, of her Mediterranean homeland. It was originally an Italianate villa, a present for the safe delivery of the latest Wittelsbach heir. But like all things German it has suffered from Teutonic giganticism over the years, pavillions, arcades, museums and even a porcelain factory being added by Henrietta's descendants, while Turkish prisoners of war dug a vast water garden and fantasy pavilions known as burgs were constructed in the grounds. One, Pagodenburg, is particularly worth visiting. From the outside it looks like yet another Baroque pavillion but the laquered furniture and Delft tiles inside give a very 18th-century take on Japonisme.

And now evening approaches and, providing a diet of alcohol and protein appeals, the time has come to return through the city gates and run your eye down the menus of bier and fleisch. Vegetarians don't have a great time of it in Munich but the beer gardens are a great way to while away the evening. You may spot the occasional lederhosen but, I promise you, no brass bands.

DER Travel Service (020-7290 1111; www.dertravel.co.uk) offers city breaks starting at £375 for three nights, including return flights and b&b accommodation. German National Tourist Office (020-7317 0908; www.germany-tourism.de).