King Ludwig I. commissioned his court architect Leo von Klenze to design the Ludwigstraße which is 1 km long as a "via triumphalis" at the beginning of the 19th c. After the Briennerstraße it was the second monumental avenue in Munich beginning at the Odeonsplatz.
The southern part up to the Theresienstraße is exclusively designed by Leo von Klenze with Italian Renaissance palazzi. In 1827 King Ludwig I. gave the architect Friedrich von Gärtner the order to continue the construction of the street because he was not satisfied any more with the slow construction progress of Klenze. Gärtner preferred the Early Renaissance architecture in Italy but held to Klenze's basic conception of broad-fronted buildings. A very nice example of his style is the Bavarian State Library, one of the largest German libraries with more than 7 mio. volumes. Next to it he constructed the Ludwigskirche in a Romantic Byzantine style.
At the Ludwig-Maximilian-University the street opens up to a kind of forum with the Professor-Huber-Platz on the right hand side and the Geschwister-Scholl-Platz on the left hand side. The squares are named after the founders of the resistance group Weiße Rose (The White Rose) distributing leaflets here against the Nazi regime for what they were excecuted in 1943. The terminal point of the street at the north is the Siegestor (Arch of Victory) the pendant to the Feldherrnhalle (Field Marshal's Hall).
U-Bahn: Odeonsplatz (U3 - U6), Universität (U3, U6)