Frankfurt

Frankfurt's Bankenviertel — the financial district that occupies the streets between the Old Town and the Hauptbahnhof — is the only true skyscraper district in Germany and gives the city its “Mainhattan” nickname. The Commerzbank Tower (259 m, Norman Foster, 1997) was briefly Europe's tallest building when it opened and is the headquarters of Commerzbank; the Messeturm (256 m, Helmut Jahn, 1991) sits at the entrance to the Messe trade-fair grounds and looks back towards the Old Town. The European Central Bank moved into its new headquarters in Ostend in 2014 — the twin-tower complex by Coop Himmelb(l)au integrates the historic Großmarkthalle wholesale-market hall into a 185-metre vertical campus. The DZ Bank Tower (208 m), the Westend Tower (208 m), the Taunusturm (170 m), and the Tower 185 give the skyline its layered silhouette. The Main Tower (200 m, the Helaba bank's headquarters) at Neue Mainzer Straße is the only one with a free public observation deck — an outdoor 200-metre platform open daily until 21:00 in summer, with the city's most spectacular skyline-and-river panorama. The Bankenviertel is walked best on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon when the corporate-pedestrian volume drops; the rooftops of MyZeil, the Galeria-Kaufhof, and the Skyline Plaza shopping centres offer close-range skyline views without the Main Tower queue.

Frankfurt's Old Town was nearly entirely destroyed in the British and US bombing raids of March 1944 — the half-timbered medieval centre that had survived a thousand years was reduced to rubble in three nights. The post-war reconstruction has been incremental: the Römer (the medieval town hall on the Römerberg) was rebuilt to its 15th-century form by 1955; the Römerberg square ensemble of timber-frame Renaissance houses (the Ostzeile) was reconstructed in the 1980s; and the most recent — the Dom-Römer Quarter, opened 2018 — recreated the historical Krönungsweg coronation route between the Imperial Cathedral (Dom) and the Römer, with fifteen reconstructed half-timbered houses on the original cellar foundations and another twenty new contextual buildings. The Imperial Cathedral of Saint Bartholomew (Kaiserdom Sankt Bartholomäus, late-Gothic, 14th-15th centuries) is where the kings and emperors of the Holy Roman Empire were elected from 1356 and crowned from 1562 — climb the 95-metre tower (328 steps) for the panoramic view back over the Main and the Bankenviertel. The Goethehaus on Großer Hirschgraben — the reconstructed birthplace of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (born here 1749) — and the adjacent German Romanticism Museum (opened 2021) anchor the literary side of the Old Town. The Eiserner Steg footbridge, built 1869 and rebuilt after WWII, crosses the Main from the Old Town to Sachsenhausen and is locked-padlock-covered in the European tradition.

The Museumsufer is Frankfurt's distinctive cultural offering — twelve museums lined up along a one-kilometre stretch of the Main's south bank between the Eiserner Steg and the Friedensbrücke. Conceptually launched in the 1980s by Frankfurt's then-cultural senator Hilmar Hoffmann, the embankment now houses one of Europe's densest museum corridors. The Städel Museum (Schaumainkai 63) is the cultural anchor — founded in 1815, with one of Germany's most important art collections (Vermeer, Botticelli, Tischbein's Goethe portrait, the Old Masters wing, the underground 2012 Schneider+Schumacher extension for contemporary art). The Liebieghaus next door holds Europe's most-comprehensive sculpture collection from antiquity to the 19th century. The Deutsches Architekturmuseum, the Deutsches Filmmuseum, the Museum für Kommunikation, the Museum der Weltkulturen (anthropology), the Museum Angewandte Kunst (Richard Meier's 1985 building), the Bibelhaus, and the Ikonenmuseum complete the line. The Museumsuferfest in late August is one of Germany's largest urban festivals, with all the museums opening late, food stalls along three kilometres of riverbank, and concerts on stages every 200 metres. The Museumsufer-Ticket (3 days, all twelve museums + several others) is the practical entry. North of the river, the Schirn Kunsthalle on the Römerberg, the MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst (the 'cake-piece' triangular building, Hans Hollein, 1991), and the Senckenberg Naturmuseum (the natural history museum with its dinosaur hall) round out the museum offering — Frankfurt has roughly 25 museums in total.

Sachsenhausen on the Main's south bank is Frankfurt's apple-cider district and the city's most distinct neighbourhood. The Apfelwein (Äppelwoi in Hessian dialect) tradition runs back to the 16th century, when Frankfurt cidermakers replaced grape wine after a Rhine wine-blight; today the Sachsenhausen taverns are a UNESCO-recognised tradition under the German national list. The cluster of half-timbered Apfelwein-Wirtschaften runs along Klappergasse, Wallstraße and Kleine Rittergasse — Atschel (since 1849), Adolf Wagner (1911), Zum Gemalten Haus, and dozens of others serve the Stöffche (the local term for cider) in the ribbed grey-and-blue Bembel ceramic jug, with a Glas Geripptes (the ribbed glass) and Frankfurt-specific food: Handkäs mit Musik (sour-milk cheese with onions and vinegar), Grüne Soße (the seven-herb cold sauce, traditionally with boiled eggs and potatoes — Frankfurt's signature dish), Frankfurter Würstchen (the original “frankfurter” sausages), Rippche mit Kraut (smoked pork with sauerkraut). The Schweizer Straße in southern Sachsenhausen is the gentrified-since-2010 second restaurant and shopping spine — Italian, Vietnamese and gastropub options alongside the older Apfelwein houses. The Sachsenhausen riverbank itself, between the Eiserner Steg and the Holbeinsteg, is a Sunday-afternoon promenade with the views back to the Bankenviertel; the Frankfurt Aquarium-Stiftung Tiergarten and the Goethe-Turm (a wooden lookout tower in the Stadtwald forest, rebuilt 2019 after a 2017 arson) sit on the Sachsenhausen heights.

Frankfurt Airport (FRA) is the largest German airport by passenger traffic, the largest by air-cargo volume, and one of the four major European hubs alongside Heathrow, Charles-de-Gaulle and Schiphol. Operated by Fraport AG (a Hessen-state-and-Frankfurt-municipality majority shareholder), the airport handles 60+ million passengers a year across two runways (the parallel north-south runways), a third partial cross-wind runway, and a new fourth runway (the Nordwest, opened 2011 after long planning). Terminals 1 (Lufthansa, Star Alliance) and 2 (most other carriers) are connected by the SkyLine elevated automated people-mover; Terminal 3, on the southern side of the field, takes additional non-Lufthansa services. The long-distance railway station (Fernbahnhof) at the airport — separate from the regional/S-Bahn station — is one of Germany's busiest rail-air interchanges, with ICE services every 30 minutes to Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof (12 min), Köln (1 h), Berlin (4 h), Munich (3 h), Hamburg (4 h), plus the Paris-Frankfurt-Vienna corridor and the night-train Nightjet to Hamburg, Vienna, Zurich and beyond. From the city centre, the regional S-Bahn S8/S9 reaches the airport in 12 minutes from Hauptbahnhof; the dedicated Lufthansa Airport Bus, the The Sky Line people mover and dozens of regional bus services complete the access. FRA's “Concourse A” (Pier A) is the longest single airport pier in Europe at 700 metres.

The Frankfurter Buchmesse (Frankfurt Book Fair, every October at the Messe Frankfurt grounds) is the world's largest publishing trade fair — 4,000+ exhibitors from 100+ countries, 230,000+ visitors over five days (the first three days trade-only, the last two open to the public), and the focal annual event for international book-rights trading. The fair runs since 1949 (the post-war revival of a tradition going back to the 15th-century Frankfurt book-printing fair) and rotates a Guest of Honour country each year — the host country presents its literature, culture and language across an extensive pavilion programme. Frankfurt is the world's #1 publishing city after New York and London. Beyond the Buchmesse, the Messe Frankfurt complex (the trade-fair grounds west of the Hauptbahnhof, with the iconic glass-cone Festhalle, the Messeturm at the eastern entrance, and the new four-hall Halle 12) hosts the Automechanika (every two years), the Light + Building lighting-and-electrical fair, the Ambiente consumer-goods fair, the IAA Mobility (which moved to Munich in 2021 but returns to Frankfurt in alternation), and the Frankfurt International Trade Fair calendar that runs ~50 major events a year. Christmas market, Stoffel summer wine festival, the Mainfest in August (anniversary of the city's 1340 fair-rights), and the Museumsuferfest fill the city's open-air calendar.

Frankfurt's 16 districts (Stadtteile) range from the corporate-financial Innenstadt to the residential outer belt. Westend, north-west of the centre between the Bankenviertel and the Bockenheim, is the most expensive residential district — Belle Époque villas, the Goethe-University main campus, the Palmengarten botanical gardens (one of Germany's largest, 22 ha) and the Senckenberg Natural History Museum on the Bockenheimer Landstraße. Bockenheim further west is the bohemian-academic district around the old university campus, with the Leipziger Straße as its food-and-shopping spine. Bornheim east of the centre — known to Frankfurters as “Lustige Bornheim” (cheerful Bornheim) — is the family-residential district with the Berger Straße as its long restaurant-and-pub spine and the Bornheim Mitte tram hub at its centre. Nordend between Westend and Bornheim is the trendiest-since-2010 residential neighbourhood — the Berger Straße extension, the Friedberger Anlage park, and a dense café-and-restaurant scene. Sachsenhausen on the south bank holds the Apfelwein quarter and the Museumsufer. Östend further east of the centre underwent total redevelopment around the European Central Bank's 2014 move and is now the “new Frankfurt” creative district with the Hafenpark riverside, the Eiserner Steg's east-bank counterpart, and the renovated Großmarkthalle. The outer districts — Höchst (with its preserved medieval old town, often called 'Frankfurt's Altstadt that survived'), Niederrad (with the Stadion-District football venue), and the Taunus suburbs of Niederursel and Eschersheim — are reachable by tram or S-Bahn within 30 minutes from Hauptwache.

Frankfurt's public transport runs on the Rhein-Main-Verkehrsverbund (RMV) integrated fare system that covers the city, the airport, the surrounding Hessen districts, and parts of Rhineland-Palatinate. Within the city, traffiQ-operated U-Bahn (nine lines), tram (eleven lines), and S-Bahn (run by DB but on the same fare zone) cover everywhere; the Hauptbahnhof is the western anchor, the Hauptwache and Konstablerwache the central interchanges. The RMV-CityTicket (24-hour fare zone-50 ticket) covers all transport in central Frankfurt for a single trip-of-the-day; the FrankfurtCard (one or two days, attractions discount + transport) is the tourist alternative. Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof is Germany's busiest station by passenger volume — 24 platforms, ICE services every 15 minutes to the major German cities, the international corridor to Paris (4 h), Brussels (3.5 h), Amsterdam (4 h), Zurich (4 h), Vienna (7 h via Munich), and the Nightjet sleeper to Hamburg, Vienna, Zurich, Rome and Salzburg. From the airport (FRA), the regional S-Bahn S8 or S9 reaches Hauptbahnhof in 12 minutes (regional fare zone) or the dedicated Airport Express bus from Terminal 1; the airport's separate long-distance Fernbahnhof handles the ICE services. The diplomatic quarter splits between Westend (US Consulate General on Gießener Straße — the largest US consulate in Europe — plus the British, French, and several Asian consulates), the Bockenheim/Westend boundary, and the surrounding Bockenheim and Westend villas; most are reached by U6/U7 to Bockenheimer Warte or Westend. The visa-application centres (VFS Global Frankfurt, TLScontact, BLS) cluster on Mainzer Landstraße and Friedrich-Ebert-Anlage. English is universally spoken in the international community, the financial sector, the railway and the tourist economy; standard German basics ease neighbourhood interactions.