The Beatles at the Circus-Krone-Bau, Munich, 24 June 1966

The Circus-Krone-Bau is the permanent home of Circus Krone at Marsstraße 43 in Munich. On 24 June 1966 the Beatles played two shows there, at 17:15 and 21:00, to open the Bravo-Beatles-Blitztournee, the only German tour they made. ZDF filmed in the hall. The 1962 building is still in use, and it has no Beatles marker.

The same building, still on Marsstraße

Circus Krone's first Munich building, a wooden hall from 1919, was destroyed in an air raid in December 1944. A temporary hall followed in 1945. The present Circus-Krone-Bau, with about 3,000 seats, opened in 1962, four years before the Beatles came, so the hall where they played is the one standing today. The circus uses it for its winter season and rents it for concerts and events the rest of the year. The Rolling Stones had played there in 1965.

Arrival at the Bayerischer Hof

The band flew in from London on 23 June 1966 and checked into the Hotel Bayerischer Hof, where they held a press conference. Fans packed the street outside, and the four came briefly to a window.

Two shows on 24 June

The concerts were the first dates of a three-city tour sponsored by the youth magazine Bravo: Munich on 24 June, the Grugahalle in Essen on 25 June and the Ernst-Merck-Halle in Hamburg on 26 June. It was also the start of the 1966 tour that went on to Japan and the Philippines.

Munich had shows at 17:15 and 21:00, each for 3,054 people. Tickets cost 22 DM. The year before, the Rolling Stones had charged 6.90 DM. Cliff Bennett and the Rebel Rousers, the Rattles, and Peter and Gordon played first. The Beatles' set on the tour had 11 songs, including Yesterday and Paperback Writer.

Security was unusual. Thirty wrestlers from a club in Aubing were hired as extra stewards, and the police filmed the audience to train officers for beat concerts. Ulrich Handl, who photographed the evening, later told the Abendzeitung that he hid in the Rattles' dressing room between shows while the hall was cleared.

On television

ZDF filmed in the hall and broadcast a 45-minute edit, Die Beatles, on 5 July 1966. Accounts differ on whether both shows or only the evening one went on tape; German Wikipedia says both, while other chronologies name the second show plus a short rehearsal set for the cameras.

Is there a marker?

No plaque or marker for the Beatles is recorded at the Circus-Krone-Bau. The 60th anniversary in 2026 was marked elsewhere, with a photo exhibition of 23 pictures from Herbert Hauke's archive at the Deutsches Theater München from 19 June to 19 July.

Two days later the tour reached Hamburg, the city of the band's early club years, where the sites include Beatles-Platz and the Top Ten Club.