Freising and Garching - Life Outside Munich

With its research center in Garching and the TUM School of Life Sciences Weihenstephan, TUM has two major sites outside the city of Munich. That is why many undergraduates, graduate students and professors live in Freising, Garching and other communities to the north of Munich.

Even if they are not huge metropolises, the cities north of Munich offer a high quality of life – with a lower cost of living and outstanding transit connections to the metropolis on the Isar.

Freising

For centuries, Freising was one of the political centers of the region due to its bishopric. Today the rapidly growing city of 50,000 is of supraregional importance, especially as an airport location.

In addition to its beautiful old town district, Freising offers everything you need for life, from shopping centers to theaters. The Weihenstephan district not only has an impressive monastery area but also the oldest brewery in the world. Thus, the beer shapes the urban landscape and is celebrated in various Freising beer festivals. As a separate university location, the Weihenstephan district of Freising is very important for TUM - the modern Weihenstephan campus is home to the TUM School of Life Sciences, where the life sciences department of the Technical University of Munich with currently over 4,000 students and annually around 150 dissertations is located. The Weihenstephan Science Center faculty was founded in 2000 and transformed into to the TUM School of Life Sciences in 2020.

A very special feature, which is almost to be expected, is the university's own research brewery Weihenstephan, where employees from the Chair of Brewing and Beverage Technology have developed beers such as Bavaria Pale Ale, White Hoplosion or Fresh Hop Finest. Here, in one of the most modern research breweries in the world, students are trained as brewing and food technologists, bioprocess technicians and master brewers.

Despite, or perhaps because of the distance from Munich, Freising offers its own campus life with student dormitories, university sports facilities and cultural activities.

Munich city center can be reached via the nearby motorway, or in around 30 minutes by regional express or 45 minutes by the S-Bahn city train. The Garching Research Center (Forschungszentrum Garching) can be reached in half an hour by S-Bahn and bus.

An interactive campus tour offers an insight into the TUM Campus Freising-Weihenstephan.

Garching

In recent decades a tranquil Bavarian village has become the booming small town of Garching with around 19,000 inhabitants. The TUM, with its research center in Garching, has played no small part in this.

Garching, situated not far from the Isar, combines rural idyll and a dynamic economy. A significant number of large companies have settled in the Hochbrück district. New residential are being created in open spaces in the shortest possible time. To take account of this dynamic, Garching has gotten its own subway station a few years ago.

Garching has an excellent connection to Munich city center by motorway and subway. The U6 not only takes you to the Garching Research Center within a few minutes. It also offers a quick connection to the English Garden and Marienplatz.

The Campus Garching Research Center north of Garching is the largest TUM location and at the same time one of the largest centers for science, research and teaching in Germany. Numerous renowned institutes and companies, such as facilities of the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich, institutes of the Max Planck Society, the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and the European Southern Observatory ESO, the leading intergovernmental organization for astronomy in Europe and the most productive astronomical observatory in the world are also located there. Visible signs of science on campus are, in addition to the very diverse buildings, the over 50m high weather tower at the campus entrance with a glowing TUM logo, as well as the Munich research reactor, the first nuclear facility in Germany, also known as the atomic egg because of its shape.

An interactive campus tour offers an insight into the TUM Campus Garching Research Center. If you want to get a more personal impression, you can do so during the annual “Open Day - the Long Night of Science”.