The municipality itself is surrounded by the Forstenrieder Park in the east, Mühltal in the south, Kreuzlinger Forst in the west and Grubmühl in the north.

Under the Roman Empire the settlement, then called Bratananium, marked a major crossroad of Via Julia, which connected the provincial capital Augusta Vindelicorum (Augsburg) with Juvavum (Salzburg) and Lake Constance.

During the last days of World War II, the 8,000 surviving inmates of the Dachau concentration camp were sent on a so-called death march.

The peaceful invasion of the US forces was possible due to the surrender of Hans Penzl of the Freiheitsaktion Bayern, a Bavarian resistance cell.

[5] After the war, the special military hospital for tuberculosis, situated in a former barracks building, was used in 1945 for treating the survivors of the concentration camps by the US Forces.