With 763,380 inhabitants (December 31, 2019), Frankfurt am Main
is the largest city in Hesse and the fifth largest in Germany. It is
not a district and forms the center of the Frankfurt metropolitan
area with more than 2.3 million inhabitants. Around 5.8 million
people live in the entire Frankfurt / Rhine-Main metropolitan
region.
Frankfurt am Main has been one of Germany's major
urban centers since the Middle Ages. First mentioned in a document
in 794, it had been an imperial city since 1372. By the end of the
Holy Roman Empire in 1806, most of the Roman-German kings were
elected in Frankfurt am Main and, since 1562, were also crowned
emperors. From 1815 on, the Free City of Frankfurt was a sovereign
member state of the German Confederation. The Federal Assembly met
here and in 1848/49 the first German parliament met with the
National Assembly in the Paulskirche. After the German War in 1866,
Prussia annexed the Free City of Frankfurt. Due to the rapid
industrialization, a population surge began. Since 1875 the city has
had over 100,000 inhabitants, since 1928 more than 500,000, since
2013 more than 700,000. As a sign of the commitment to European
unification, Frankfurt has been calling itself European City since
1998.
Today Frankfurt am Main is one of the most important
international financial centers, an important industrial, service
and exhibition center and is one of the world's cities. Frankfurt am
Main is the seat of the European Central Bank, the Deutsche
Bundesbank, the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, numerous financial
institutions (including Deutsche Bank, Commerzbank, DZ Bank, KfW),
the supervisory authorities BaFin and EIOPA and Messe Frankfurt. The
Frankfurt Book Fair and the Music Fair are considered to be the
world's leading trade fairs in their fields, and the International
Motor Show took place here until 2019. The city is also the seat of
many national sports associations, including the German Olympic
Sports Confederation, the German Football Association and the German
Motor Sport Association.
Thanks to its central location,
Frankfurt am Main is a European transport hub. The airport is one of
the largest in the world, the main train station is a central
railway junction and the Frankfurter Kreuz is the busiest road
junction in Germany. In addition, DE-CIX in Frankfurt is the world's
largest Internet node in terms of throughput.
A specialty for
a European city is the steadily growing high-rise skyline of
Frankfurt. Some striking skyscrapers are among the tallest in
Europe. That is why Frankfurt am Main is sometimes ironically
referred to as Mainhattan. Historic landmarks of the city are the
old opera and the partly reconstructed ensemble of the old town with
Römerberg including Römer town hall, Dom-Römer-Areal and Kaiserdom.
More than 40 percent of the urban area are parks and landscape
protection areas, including the Frankfurt Green Belt with the
Frankfurt City Forest, which the city has owned since 1372.
The city's cultural life is traditionally characterized by civic
foundations, patronage and liberal private initiatives. This
resulted in the Städtische Bühnen with the two sections Oper
Frankfurt and Schauspiel Frankfurt, the Frankfurt Museumsufer, the
Senckenberg Nature Museum, the Schirn Kunsthalle and the Museum of
Modern Art, the Historical Museum and Goethe's birthplace in the old
town, the Alte Oper and the English Theater , the zoo and the palm
garden. The Goethe University, founded in 1914 by a community
foundation as the Royal University, is the fourth largest German
university in terms of number of students. It produced several
Leibniz and Nobel Prize winners. There are also seven other state,
church and private universities in the city with a total of over
60,000 students.
Most tourists are concentrated in the city center. However, they miss
the diversity of Frankfurt's districts. Districts like Bornheim and
Ostend (multicultural), Bockenheim (students), Sachsenhausen (chic) and
Nordend (chic/alternative) show Frankfurt from its most attractive and
true side! Here you will also find the loveliest cafés and parks (see
also "Activities").
Frankfurt am Main comprises 43 districts
including the airport, which is a district in its own right. Officially
there are 46, because three districts (Nordend, Westend and
Sachsenhausen) are statistically divided again:
old town and downtown
Station district (Bahnhofsviertel, Gallus and Gutleutviertel)
West
(Griesheim, Höchst, Nied, Sindlingen, Sossenheim, Unterliederbach and
Zeilsheim)
South (Niederrad, Oberrad, Sachsenhausen, Schwanheim)
Northwest (Heddernheim, Niederursel, Praunheim and Rödelheim)
Mid-West (Bockenheim, Hausen and Westend)
Central-North (Berkersheim,
Dornbusch, Eckenheim, Eschersheim, Frankfurter Berg, Ginnheim, Nordend
and Preungesheim)
North (Bonames, Harheim, Kalbach, Nieder-Erlenbach
and Nieder-Eschbach)
East (Bergen-Enkheim, Bornheim, Fechenheim,
Ostend, Riederwald and Seckbach)
Airport
The following
articles exist on an interim basis and are to be reclassified
prognostically into the above-mentioned articles:
Downtown districts
Sachsenhausen
Outskirts
Maximum
More Frankfurt Articles:
Museums
Hardly any other city in Europe is characterized by its skyscrapers
like Frankfurt. You can see the skyline from afar, no matter what means
of transport you use to travel. The Ignatz-Bubis Bridge (Strab 14,
Hospital zum hl. Geist) offers the best view, while the Deutschherrn
Bridge (railway and pedestrian bridge) is recommended for taking photos.
Due to the large number of high-rise buildings in Frankfurt (which
is still growing), only the tallest buildings over 150 meters are listed
here. A complete list can be found at List of skyscrapers in Frankfurt
am Main.
1 Commerzbank Tower, Grosse Gallusstrasse 17-19, 60311
Frankfurt am Main. Due to its sophisticated architecture, the
Commerzbank Tower, built in 1997, is one of the most striking buildings
on the Frankfurt skyline and, at 259 meters, the tallest building not
only in Frankfurt, but in all of Germany and even the entire EU. The
skyscraper serves as the headquarters of Commerzbank. The canteen in the
Commerzbank Tower is also open to external guests (always Monday to
Friday at 12 p.m., entrance through the rear entrance on Kaiserplatz)
and allows a glimpse into the interior of the building, otherwise there
are guided tours through the building only for groups on request.
2
Messeturm, Friedrich-Ebert-Anlage 49, 60308 Frankfurt am Main. The
Messeturm from 1990 was the tallest when it was built at 257m and is now
the second tallest building in Frankfurt. The landmark of the Frankfurt
Trade Fair, visible from afar, is now rented out as an office building.
The building is not open to the public. Deutsche Post honors the
Messeturm as one of only six buildings in Germany with its own postal
code; three other buildings that received this honor are also high-rise
buildings in Frankfurt.
3 Westend Tower, Westendstrasse 1, 60325
Frankfurt am Main. Less well known but no less striking is the Westend
Tower from 1993, at 208 meters rank 3 among Frankfurt's skyscrapers. The
building serves as the headquarters of DZ Bank. The lobby on the ground
floor is open to the public and is worth seeing for the art exhibitions.
4 Main Tower, Neue Mainzer Strasse 52-58, 60311 Frankfurt am Main. Tel:
(0)69 36504878 . The 200m high Main Tower from 1999 offers the only
publicly accessible viewing platform of all Frankfurt skyscrapers. The
Main Tower is best known for the fact that the broadcasting studios of
the Hessischer Rundfunk were located there for years, which revealed a
breathtaking view of Frankfurt during the programs broadcast from here
(including the drawing of the lottery numbers). Open: in summer Sun-Thu
10:00-21:00, Fri and Sat 10:00-23:00, closed two hours earlier in
winter. Price: adults €7.50, children €5.00.
5 Tower 185,
Friedrich-Ebert-Anlage 35-37, 60327 Frankfurt am Main. Tower 185 from
2011, despite its name a full 200m high, is located right next to the
Messeturm. Today it is the seat of the auditing company
PricewaterhouseCoopers.
6 ONE, Brussels Street 1, 60327 Frankfurt am
Main. The latest addition to the Frankfurt high-rises is the ONE,
completed in June 2022 and 191 meters high. The building serves as a
hotel tower, next to it on the 47th floor there is a publicly accessible
bar with a viewing platform, which you should really only visit for the
view, because the cocktails are terrible.
7 Omniturm, Grosse
Gallusstrasse 16-18, 60312 Frankfurt am Main. The 190 meter high
Omniturm, which opened in 2019 and is a mixed residential and office
tower, is comparatively new.
8 Trianon, Mainzer Landstrasse 16-24,
60325 Frankfurt am Main. The 186m high Trianon from 1993 is not well
known despite its height and age. It serves as the headquarters of
DekaBank.
9 European Central Bank, Sonnemannstrasse 20-22, 60314
Frankfurt am Main. The 185m high new building of the European Central
Bank from 2014 on the site of the former wholesale market hall is one of
the structurally and politically most controversial skyscrapers in
Frankfurt. It stands alone in the east far away from the other high-rise
buildings in Frankfurt and is therefore easy to recognize. The ECB
offers public tours of the building, but the waiting times are very long
and the security checks are extremely strict.
10 Grand Tower,
Europa-Allee 2, 60327 Frankfurt am Main. In 2020, the 180m high Grand
Tower, Frankfurt's tallest purely residential tower, was built in the
new Europaviertel, and it is not without reason that critics called it
the "residential tower for the rich".
11 Opernturm, Bockenheimer
Landstrasse 2-4, 60306 Frankfurt am Main. The Opernturm, built in 2009,
named for its location right next to the Alte Oper, reaches a height of
170 m. It is the headquarters of the Swiss bank UBS.
12 Taunusturm,
Taunustor 1-3, 60310 Frankfurt am Main. The 170m high Taunusturm from
2014 stands (literally) in the shadow of its tall neighbour, the
Commerzbank Tower. It serves as an office tower.
13 Silberturm,
Jürgen-Ponto-Platz 1, 60329 Frankfurt am Main. The 166m high Silberturm
from 1978 was once the tallest building in Germany and known as the
headquarters of the Dresdner Bank. Today the office tower is used by
Deutsche Bahn.
14 Westend Gate, Hamburger Allee 2-4, 60486 Frankfurt
am Main. The 160m high Westend Gate, which is particularly striking due
to its shape and was built in 1976, is one of the oldest still existing
high-rise buildings in Frankfurt. Today it serves as an office and hotel
tower.
15 Deutsche Bank high-rise, Taunusanlage 12, 60325 Frankfurt
am Main. At 155m, the twin towers of the Deutsche Bank (also known as
"Soll und haben") from 1984 are not the tallest, but certainly the
best-known skyscrapers in Frankfurt. Especially in film and television,
these towers are considered the epitome of the German economy.
16
Marienturm, Taunusanlage 9-10, 60329 Frankfurt am Main. The Marienturm,
which was built in 2019 and is 155m high, seems quite young and due to
its location in the middle of larger skyscrapers rather inconspicuous.
Like many other skyscrapers, it also serves as an office tower.
17
Skyper, Taunusanlage 1, 60329 Frankfurt am Main. The 154m high Skyper
from 2004 is particularly striking because of its unusual shape. It also
serves as an office tower.
The Rhein-Main Frankfurt am Main
Industrial Heritage Route is a section of the Rhein-Main Industrial
Heritage Route in the Hessian city of Frankfurt am Main. The project
tries to open up monuments of industrial history in the Rhine-Main area.
A special feature of Frankfurt is that all inner-city churches have
been in the hands of the city since 1830 through a so-called "endowment
contract". The two most important and well-known sacred buildings are:
The cathedral of the Catholic St. Bartholomew parish. The cruciform
Gothic hall church was never a bishopric. The Roman-German emperors have
been elected here since the 14th century and crowned since the 16th
century. Worth seeing in the interior are the Bartholomäus frieze (15th
century), choir stalls (14th century), Maria sleeping altar (1434),
Crucifixion group (1509); The tower (96 m high, one of the most
beautiful in Germany) can be climbed from April to October when it is
not being renovated (324 steps). The cathedral museum can also be found
in the entrance area of the cathedral, where numerous sacred works of
art can be found and the history of the cathedral is illustrated.
Paulskirche, built from 1789 to 1833, memorial to democracy in Germany,
seat of the first German National Assembly (1848/49), destroyed in World
War II, rebuilt from 1947 to 1949, is no longer used as a church.
In addition to these two churches and the high-rise buildings, the
symbol of the city is the Römer, which is located on the west side of
the Römerberg, south-east of the Paulskirche. The Römer has been the
city hall of Frankfurt for over 600 years and originally consists of
three separate buildings. With other town houses from the 16th to 18th
centuries, the historic town hall complex consists of 11 houses that
were destroyed and rebuilt in World War II: the Salzhaus, the
Frauenstein house, the Löwenstein house, the Römer house (the old town
hall with tower hall and Kaisersaal), the Limburg House, the Silberberg
House, the Bürgersaal wing, the Goldener Schwan House, the Wanebach
House, the Wanebachhöfchen and the Römerhöfchen with Hercules Fountain.
To the west is the new town hall from the years 1900 to 1908, to the
south is the Gothic church of St. Leonhard. Opposite the old town hall
is the modern row of houses, rebuilt in 1983, with a historical
half-timbered facade that is true to the original. This eastern line of
the Römerberg, with its spacious square and the fountain of justice,
creates the special flair of the remaining old town. To the north is the
Black Star, to the south is the Stone House.
Between 1972 and
2010, the Technical Town Hall stood between the Römer and the cathedral,
a concrete block in the style of brutalism. In its place, the complete
historical street rows Markt and Hinter dem Lammchen with the chicken
market were restored between 2014 and 2018. Of the 35 new buildings in
the district, 15 are reconstructions of houses destroyed in World War
II. Opposite the cathedral, at Markt 5, is the most beautifully
reconstructed house, the Goldene Waage. This reversed the construction
mistakes of the 1970s and partially restored parts of the historic old
town that burned down in 1944. Since May 2018, the new old town district
with the former coronation path has been open to the general public. The
official opening was from September 21st to 23rd, 2018.
Imperial
Palace Franconofurd, excavations of a Roman settlement and the old
Imperial Palace. The former open excavation site Archaeological Garden
was built over in 2013 with the new town hall and permanently protected
from the weather. The Roman and Carolingian relics have been open to the
public free of charge since August 2018, daily from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Rententurm • (1456), defense tower of the late Gothic town
fortifications with Rentenamt (customs office at the harbour).
Staufer Wall, part of the first Frankfurt city fortifications (12th
century).
Haus Wertheim, the only half-timbered building in the old
town that survived the war. • It is opposite the new building of the
Historical Museum.
Canvas House • Late Gothic town house around 1390,
today: Caricatura Museum.
If you leave the old town to the north, you get to the Hauptwache,
which in turn represents the center of the city center (to be
distinguished from the old town). The Hauptwache is a baroque building
with underground shopping arcades and a hub for the U-Bahn and S-Bahn,
to which the main shopping streets of the city run: the Zeil, a
pedestrian zone, from the east and the Kaiserstraße with entertainment
venues in the side streets from the direction of the main station.
The Kaiserstraße leads over the Roßmarkt, to the south of which the
Goethehaus is located. The house where the poet was born was rebuilt
true to the original between 1946 and 1951, with the interior including
the museum being restored to its original condition. Other important
buildings in the city include:
The Alte Oper, originally built in
1873-80, was bombed during World War II. Rebuilt in 1976-81, numerous
concerts are held here today. Accessible from the Hauptwache via the
so-called "Freßgass".
Palais Thurn und Taxis • Reconstructed since
2010
Museumsufer with its 13 renowned museums on the Main
Old
Sachsenhausen − Ebbelweiviertel
Kuhhirtenturm, Große Rittergasse,
also called “Elephant”, built at the end of the 14th century, late
Gothic, defense tower of the Frankfurt city fortifications, until the
17th century passage to the city center (“Kuhhirtentor”,
“Paradiespförtchen”), in the mid-1920s the house of the Composer Paul
Hindemith, who wrote his opera Cardillac there, severe damage in World
War II, today owned by the youth hostel.
Detailed article: Museums in Frankfurt am Main
With more than
60 museums and exhibition halls, the city is culturally blessed. On the
Museumsufer alone on the south side of the Main opposite the city
center, 13 museums have settled. There are also the two most famous art
collections in the city, the Städel (paintings) and the Liebieghaus
(sculptures). The following website gives an overview of the Frankfurt
galleries.
Night of the Museums on the penultimate Saturday of
April. (currently not taking place)
On the last weekend in
August, around 20 museums can be visited with the Museumsuferfest button
for €7. There is also an extensive programme. (currently not taking
place)
Exhibitions
Culture
In addition to the Alte Oper
there are numerous other cultural institutions.
When relaxation is needed, the parks are a good choice. These include
the nationally known Palmengarten, the adjacent Botanical Garden and the
spacious Grüneburgpark with the Korean Garden in the west end. The
Frankfurt Zoo is still popular. The Günthersburgpark in Bornheim and the
small but nice Holzhausenpark are also an urban and at the same time
idyllic experience. The latter is in the immediate vicinity of the city
center and houses a small moated castle, the Holzhausenschlösschen. The
Bethmannpark near the Konstablerwache has a beautiful Chinese garden.
Exotic plants such as palm trees and citrus fruits grow on the banks of
the Main in the so-called "Mainpark Nice" due to warm temperatures that
are well above average. The Nidda from Bad Vilbel to Höchst also offers
a lot of green and idyllic landscape on the accompanying green belt
cycle path.
Public parks of the Main metropolis:
Ostpark - in
the district of Ostend
Lohrpark - in the district of Seckbach
Niddatal - Frankfurt's largest public park in the districts of
Praunheim, Ginnheim and Hausen
Grüneburgpark - Frankfurt's popular
public park in the Westend district
Günthersburgpark - public and
play park in the district of Nordend
Huthpark - Frankfurt's
little-known public park in the Seckbach district
Rebstockpark -
Frankfurt's youngest public park with the Rebstockbad in the west of
Bockenheim
Frankfurt-Höchst
Also not to be missed is Höchst's
old town, one of the last remaining half-timbered ensembles. There is
also the Bolongaro Palace from the 18th century, the largest private
building of the era, with ceiling paintings, stucco and a porcelain
exhibition.
Above the roofs
Good vantage points are the Main
Tower (admission €5 for the elevator, reduced €3.50 (pupils, students
etc.), open from 10 a.m., website) in the banking district and the
Goethe Tower (only open in summer) in the city forest .
There is a wide range of free activities such as B. the Frankfurt
Architectural Photo Tour (photographic city tour in German and English)
or the Frankfurt Free Alternative Walking Tour.
Very detailed city
tours are offered by the Kulturothek. Also interesting for Frankfurters.
Frankfurt Tourism offers guided tours and round trips for every taste.
Whether on foot or by car, Frankfurt's sights can be visited in many
different ways.
Segway Tour Frankfurt (Seg Tour GmbH), Taubenstraße
11. Tel: +49 69 21939296, email: info@segwaytour-frankfurt.de. City tour
on different routes through Frankfurt with the electric standing scooter
"Segway®". In addition to the classic tour to the most famous sights,
there is also a tour along the Main or a special bank tour to choose
from. Also bookable for events, company outings or bachelor parties.
Price: EUR 85.00. Accepted payment methods: Cash, Master, Visa, Amex,
Apple Pay, Google Pay, EC.
Frankfurt sightseeing by audio guide -
discover the Main metropolis individually with an MP3 player or city
guide app.
Cherrytours Frankfurt - My city tour (Cherrytours GmbH),
Taubenstrasse 11. Tel.: +49 69 21939297, e-mail: office@cherrytours.de.
City tour private or in small groups for individualists. Tours available
daily, also in different languages. Individual start and end points
possible on request. Price: from 15 EUR. Accepted payment methods: Cash,
Master, Visa
The sporty city tour - sight jogging - with running
shoes to the sights of Frankfurt
Child-friendly tours and city
rallies through Frankfurt
Association of certified tour guides in
Frankfurt and their diverse range of tours
Frankfurt is a stage city on the Main Cycle Route.
Anyone who
is in Frankfurt should not be fooled by the hustle and bustle of the
city center: Frankfurt also has something sophisticated and idyllic to
offer the tourist:
If you want to get to know Frankfurt from its
true side, you should take a walk from the theater (U-Bahn
Willy-Brandt-Platz) through the ramparts along the banking district to
the Old Opera. From there via the Freßgass to the Hauptwache. A short
detour to the Zeilgalerie (beautiful view of the skyline, free of
charge) and continue to stroll to the Römer. From there via the
Archaeological Garden (excavations of a Roman settlement) to the
cathedral. "Cross over" back to the Römerberg and over the Eisernen Steg
to the Sachsenhäuser Ufer. There you can take a wonderful walk on the
promenade and admire the imposing city silhouette.
One “floor”
higher, at street level, are the museums on the Museumsufer. The German
Film Museum, the German Architecture Museum, the Museum for
Communication, the Museum for Applied Arts and the Museum of World
Cultures are particularly noteworthy. At the end of a museum tour, one
should not miss the romantic coffee in the Liebieghaus, which is located
in the backyard of a 19th-century villa.
Tourists often ignore
the districts of Frankfurt and the beautiful parks. Starting in
Bockenheim, you can take a wonderful stroll through intact 19th-century
districts via the Westend and Nordend to Bornheim, stopping at one of
the many cafés and parks (Grüneburg, Günthersburg and Holzhausenpark are
just a few examples).
Ride on the Ebbelwei-Express - the historic
tram from the 1950s runs from the Zoo stop on a circular route right
through Frankfurt, past numerous sights. On the way there is the famous
Ebbelwei (Frankfurt apple wine) together with a bag of pretzels,
alternatively as a non-alcoholic version also apple juice or mineral
water. An audio guide as a podcast for your own smartphone or MP3 player
can be downloaded from the website. Timetable and prices on the website.
To swim
All of Frankfurt's swimming pools are operated by
Frankfurt's own pools. Opening times, prices and the duration of the
outdoor pool season are also announced there.
It should be noted
that the outdoor pools are usually only open in season, and the indoor
pools only open out of season. However, the opening times are
coordinated so that you can always swim either in the outdoor pool or in
the indoor pool.
indoor pools
Titus-Therme in the north-west
of the city
Panorama pool in Bornheim
Indoor swimming pool in
Höchst
Riedbad in Bergen-Enkheim (combined indoor and outdoor pool)
Textorbad in Sachsenhausen
The Rebstockbad is temporarily closed for
renovation.
outdoor pools
Riedbad in Bergen-Enkheim (combined
indoor and outdoor pool)
Outdoor swimming pool in Hausen
Silo bath
in Höchst
Stadium pool in Sachsenhausen
Brentanobad in Roedelheim
Eschersheim outdoor pool
Nieder-Eschbach outdoor pool
sports
facilities
For passive athletes, there are pretty much all kinds of
sports to be admired in Frankfurt. The most famous sports venues:
Deutsche Bank Park (formerly Commerzbank Arena): Eintracht Frankfurt
(1st Bundesliga)
PSD Bank Arena: 1. FFC Frankfurt (Women's
Bundesliga) and Frankfurt Universe (American Football, GFL)
Eissporthalle Frankfurt: Löwen Frankfurt (ice hockey, DEL2)
Fraport
Arena: Frankfurt Skyliners (Basketball Bundesliga) and United Volleys
(Volleyball Bundesliga)
The Frankfurt Golf Club in the Niederrad
district is one of the most beautiful courses in Germany. The 18-hole
championship course was designed in the English style.
Regular
events
The Dippemess is the oldest folk festival in Frankfurt and one
of the largest and most well-known folk festivals in Frankfurt. It
always takes place twice a year, at Easter and in autumn, in front of
the ice rink in Frankfurt. On site you will find numerous rides such as
Ferris wheel, bumper cars, etc.
The Wäldchestag takes place on the
Tuesday after Pentecost at the Oberforsthaus, near the stadium. Here you
will find more of a cultural offer with music events and numerous
culinary offers. Until the 1990s, the day in Frankfurt am Main was a
public holiday on which all businesses and shops were closed.
The
Eschborn-Frankfurt cycle race every year on May 1st, often still known
by its old name Around the Henninger Tower, is one of the classics of
cycling in Germany. The course leads from Frankfurt to the hills of the
Vordertaunus and back again. In addition to the professional race, there
is also an amateur course for amateur cyclists (limited contingent -
register early!).
The JPMorgan run every year in June is the largest
company run in the world and the second largest city run with 70,000
participants. Registration for this run is basically open to everyone,
due to the size of two points, the course goes through the whole city.
Proceeds from this run will be donated to charity.
Ironman: Probably
the most famous triathlon in the world always takes place in summer.
They swim in the Langener Waldsee, then they cycle to the Wetterau, and
the final run takes place in Frankfurt.
Frankfurt Marathon every year
on the last Sunday in October. It is the oldest city run in Germany and
(after the Berlin marathon) the second largest.
By plane
Frankfurt am Main Airport (FRA) is the second largest
airport in continental Europe and the largest hub for Lufthansa, which
is based here. From Frankfurt you can fly to every corner of the world.
The airport is connected to the ICE/IC network via the airport
long-distance train station and the S-Bahn, the regional train and
regional express lines via the airport regional train station. The
Nightjet night trains stop at the airport regional train station, even
though they are long-distance trains. The city center can be reached in
11 - 15 minutes with the S 8 and S 9 from the regional train station
every 15 minutes. A single ticket to the city center costs €4.90 (as of
January 1st, 2018), the city of Frankfurt has RMV tariff zone 5000, the
airport has tariff zone 5090. The journey by taxi costs €35. The tariff
is non-negotiable as it is set out in the Frankfurt taxi regulations.
The arrival from the airport is also possible with the city bus lines of
the local public transport company traffiq 58 (Frankfurt-Höchst train
station - Lufthansa Aviation Center - Lufthansa base - airport terminal
1) and 61 (Frankfurt-South train station - airport terminal 1).
Despite its name, the low-cost airport Frankfurt-Hahn (HHN) is located
approx. 130 km from Frankfurt am Main and can be reached in 2 hours by
bus from the main train station. The ticket can be bought on the bus and
costs around €20. Sufficient time should be planned, as the buses only
run every 1 1/2 to 2 hours. (timetable)
Business jets and private
planes mainly land at Frankfurt-Egelsbach Airport. This is located 20km
south of Frankfurt in Egelsbach.
By train
Frankfurt (Main)
Hauptbahnhof has the second most passengers after Hamburg with 493,000
travelers a day and is the busiest train station in Germany with 630
long-distance and local trains and 1100 S-Bahn trains a day. Almost all
long-distance trains that run through central Germany stop here, and
there is also an extensive range of local transport connections. The
S-Bahn (exception: S7 and S8 with additional services to the airport)
stop underground in a tunnel station. The exits from the above-ground
main station to the underground S-Bahn station are on platforms 16 and
21, the elevators towards the city are on platform 18 and those to the
airport are on platform 19. It is essential to allow sufficient time.
Trains to Siegen, Marburg, Heidelberg and Mannheim are shared en route.
The central location of Frankfurt and the ICE high-speed trains make
it possible to reach the most important cities in Germany within four
hours. Some time examples: Cologne in 1:03 h, Stuttgart in 1:18 h,
Munich in 3:11 h, Hamburg in 3:36 h and Brussels in 3:06 h, Berlin,
Paris, Zurich and Amsterdam in approx. 4 h, Kiel, Schwerin and Dresden
in about 5 hours. From Frankfurt Hbf there are the following direct
long-distance connections: Bremen, Hamburg, Hanover, Berlin, Dresden,
Nuremberg, Regensburg, Passau, Vienna, Munich, Stuttgart, Freiburg,
Basel, Bern and Zurich. From France there is a high-speed connection to
Paris and since March 2012 there is a daily TGV to Marseille via
Strasbourg and Lyon. Further connections lead to Brussels and Amsterdam.
Since December 2017, a Eurocity Express has also been going to Milan
once a day. There are important local transport connections to Kassel,
Fulda, Würzburg, Heidelberg, Mannheim, Saarbrücken and Koblenz.
From the main station there are further connections with the subway (on
a separate level between the above-ground station and the S-Bahn
station) and with the tram from the station forecourt. Travelers who
want to go to the city of Frankfurt can take any S-Bahn from the main
train station in the direction of the city center and get off at
Hauptwache or Konstablerwache. To get to the old town, take the subway
to Dom/Römer.
The third long-distance station in Frankfurt is
Frankfurt (Main) Süd station. Some long-distance trains, including most
night trains and the FlixTrain, only stop here and do not go to the main
station. From Frankfurt South there are direct connections to Berlin and
regional services to Fulda and Würzburg via Aschaffenburg. The three
regional and long-distance platforms have neither escalators nor
elevators.
The night train network connects Frankfurt South with
Berlin and Prague, Frankfurt Airport with Munich, Vienna and Zurich, and
Frankfurt Hbf with Vienna, Copenhagen and Warsaw. Since the timetable
change in December 2016, night train journeys within Germany and to
Italy, Austria and Switzerland have been carried out by the ÖBB
Nightjet.
Train connections from Frankfurt Airport can be found
in the airport article.
By bus
After the liberalization of the
long-distance bus market caught Frankfurt completely unprepared and led
to hopeless traffic chaos, the new long-distance bus station Frankfurt
(Main) was opened in 2019 on the south side of the main train station.
In addition to the top dog Flixbus, long-distance bus lines from
Eurolines and some smaller providers such as the Polish operator Sindbad
also stop here. An infrastructure on site has not yet formed, for
provisions or similar you still have to switch to the main station.
A Flixbus ticket office is located directly at the long-distance bus
station, Eurolines has set up a travel agency nearby at Mannheimer
Straße 15.
In addition to the main train station, long-distance
buses also stop at the airport.
In the street
In Frankfurt am
Main, environmental zones have been set up in accordance with the Fine
Dust Ordinance. If you don't have the appropriate badge, you risk a fine
of €100 when entering an environmental zone. This also applies to
foreign road users. Date of action: 01/01/2012
Entry ban for vehicles
of pollutant groups 1+2+3 (Info Federal Environment Agency)
Since
January 2012, only cars with a green sticker are allowed to enter the
environmental zone. The zone includes the area inside the ring road,
excluding the P&R car parks and some industrial areas.
Frankfurt
is the hub of the A3 and A5 autobahns, which meet at the Frankfurter
Kreuz southwest of Frankfurt. The Frankfurter Kreuz is the busiest
motorway junction in Germany with a corresponding risk of traffic jams
at peak times. The A661 passes Frankfurt to the east and connects the
two autobahns to form an autobahn ring around Frankfurt.
Coming
from the west, the A66 and the A648 lead directly into Frankfurt - the
former leads to the Alleenring, which leads in a wide arc around
Frankfurt city center, the latter leads directly to the main station and
the city center. Coming from the east, the A66 currently ends in
Bergen-Enkheim - here there is an extreme risk of traffic jams during
rush hour with travel time losses of several hours, the motorway should
be avoided at all costs. The closure of the gap through the Riederwald
is already under construction.
park and ride
There are
park-and-ride facilities at the following stations in the Frankfurt city
area:
Frankfurt Stadium (S7, S8, S9, tram: 20, 21)
Frankfurt-Höchst train station (S1, S2, RB10, RB11, RB12, RB22, RE20)
Frankfurt-Sindlingen (S1)
Frankfurt West train station (S3, S4, S5,
S6, RB34, RB40, RB41, RB48
Praunheim Heerstrasse (U6)
Kalbach (U2)
Nieder-Eschbach (U2, U9)
Seckbach/Kruppstrasse (U4, U7)
Preungesheim (U5)
Heddernheim (U1, U2, U3, U8)
Frankfurt mountain
(S6)
Breitenbach Bridge
Frankfurt inking units (S1, S2)
Frankfurt-Zeilsheim (S2)
By boat
Traveling to Frankfurt by
ship is unusual. Excursion lines operate from Frankfurt, going up the
Main to Würzburg, down to Wiesbaden/Mainz and to various destinations on
the Rhine. These can also be used to get there, but are more expensive
than the train or bus.
Frankfurt has a dense network of S-Bahn, U-Bahn (city rail system),
trams and buses. It is often easier to move around here without a car. •
• Rhine-Main area: Schnellbahn map: S-Bahn and U-Bahn • • Line network
map: S-Bahn, U-Bahn and regional trains • Line network map S-Bahn,
U-Bahn and tram in Frankfurt • Downtown map also with bus lines
All city and local transport lines are integrated into the South Hessian
Rhein-Main-Verkehrsverbund (RMV). The tariff association goes from Mainz
to the north of Marburg and the state borders with Bavaria,
Baden-Württemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate. A transitional tariff for
the Rhein-Neckar-Verkehrsverbund applies to the district of Bergstrasse.
The single ticket for the city area without the airport costs €2.75.
The short-distance ticket (up to 2 km, the destinations for this are
indicated at each stop) costs €1.85. The day ticket for the city area
without the airport is available for €5.35 (with the airport for €9.55)
and is also valid on the daily night buses. Group day tickets for up to
5 people cost €11.30 or €16.60. • Prices as of 01/01/2018. • The tickets
are valid for immediate departure and are already stamped. There is no
presale for single tickets, for day tickets the date can be
predetermined. For time-critical journeys with the RMV - especially when
getting to the airport - one should plan the time generously, since
delays in the RMV network are not uncommon.
RMV Mobility Center
Frankfurt am Main, Zeil 129, 60313 Frankfurt am Main. Tel: (0)69
24248024. Open: Mon-Fri 10:30-18:00.
ticket purchase
Deutsche Bahn has ticket machines at all train stations, where both RMV
tickets and DB tickets for local and long-distance traffic can be
purchased. The Verkehrsgesellschaft Frankfurt (VGF) maintains ticket
machines in all underground stations as well as at all tram stops and at
some busy bus stops. In Frankfurt there are no ticket sales in trams,
the ticket must be purchased from the machine.
In addition to buying
tickets from ticket machines, it is also possible to buy daily, weekly
and monthly tickets, but not single tickets, in many kiosks that are
registered as contractual partners of the RMV.
Ticket counters
operated by the VGF for the purchase of RMV tickets are located in the
Hauptwache and Konstablerwache stations. Deutsche Bahn travel centers,
where tickets for DB local and long-distance traffic can be purchased,
but no RMV tickets, are located at the main train station, Höchst train
station, Westbahnhof, Südbahnhof and the regional and long-distance
train stations.
The Frankfurt Card is only available in the tourist
information offices and in some hotels.
night traffic
On the
weekends, selected tram and subway lines also run every half hour at
night. During the week there is a replacement service with buses, but
they drive almost the same route. Other bus lines ensure the connection
to the Frankfurt districts without rail connections at night on
weekends. The S8 and S9 S-Bahn trains generally run around the clock,
while all other S-Bahn lines only run at night on weekends. Since the
operating hours of the S-Bahn have been extended, there are only a few
night buses in the region.
Trams and buses, which are all
low-floor, are barrier-free. Trains with barrier-free access also run on
all underground lines U1 to U9, and ramps for the lower platforms
outside the tunnel sections can be laid out on all S-Bahn lines (only at
the 1st door of the train). However, the entrances to many train
stations are not barrier-free. All S-Bahn trains have been
air-conditioned since the end of 2014.
Bicycles are not permitted
on the underground, trams and buses from Monday to Friday between 6 a.m.
and 8.30 a.m. and from 4 p.m. to 6.30 p.m., but are tolerated as long as
there is space in the means of transport.
Bicycles can be taken
on regional express trains, regional trains, S-Bahn trains and regional
buses without time restrictions. As in the entire Rhine-Main area,
taking bicycles with you is free of charge.
Getting around
Frankfurt by car is very easy compared to other cities of this size -
critics would say too easy. The entire urban area is riddled with
multi-storey car parks and underground car parks, most of which belong
to the city itself and therefore charge very moderate prices for
parking. But you can also be lucky when looking for a parking space in
the side streets, although there are usually prohibition times during
the week to deter long-term parkers. The traffic axes in Frankfurt are
generously built and optimized for motor vehicle traffic, there are some
streets with a risk of traffic jams (e.g. the access road to
Bergen-Enkheim Am Erlenbruch, traffic jams there at all times of the
day, including at night), which are streets but not nearly as congested
as in other cities.
It is quite easy to get around the city by
bike. A number of new cycle paths have been laid out in recent years.
Even if Frankfurt is not yet a "bicycle city" like e.g. B. Münster, it
is still worthwhile to explore the city by bike. Around Frankfurt there
is the 63 km long green belt cycle path.
If you want, you can
also be transported by Velotaxi or rent a nextbike, €1 per half hour, €9
for a day from April to October.
The Frankfurt Card includes all
public transport in the city including the airport. There is a 50%
discount for 28 museums, the palm garden and the zoo. The ticket costs
for 1 day: €11.00, for 2 days: €16.00, groups of up to 5 people for 1
day: €23.00, for 2 days: €33.00. Prices: 2020 Currently (as of June
2020) not all facilities are open due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the
Frankfurt Card discount is currently being denied at the Städel Museum,
Liebieghaus, Zoo and Schauspiel Frankfurt.
The network ticket
Quer-durchs-Land-Ticket, which is valid throughout Germany for local
transport, is valid in Frankfurt on all S-Bahn and local trains, but not
on city transport (underground, trams, buses). The Deutsche Bahn city
ticket or BahnCard 100 is valid for all means of transport within
Frankfurt without the airport.
Accessibility
limited
barrier-free In the city of Frankfurt, most S-Bahn and U-Bahn stations
are barrier-free. Unfortunately, there are a few prominent cases of
non-accessible train stations. For example, not all platforms at
Frankfurt Süd train station are barrier-free; Ironically, the platform
where the long-distance trains stop cannot be left by wheelchair users
due to the lack of a lift.
limited barrier-free The same applies
to the tram: at some tram stops, entry is only possible by crossing the
street and boldly jumping onto the tram; Wheelchair users cannot get on
or off here. In addition, at peak times, such as when Eintracht is
playing, non-accessible trams with step access are still used.
limited barrier-free Most of the bus stops in Frankfurt's city bus
network are now barrier-free with a bus board and can be used by
wheelchair users without any problems. not barrier-free Unfortunately,
this does not apply to the night buses; the use of night buses by
wheelchair users is expressly prohibited. There are also some lines in
Frankfurt that are served by VW Transporter-based minibuses; these buses
cannot be used by wheelchair users either.
Frankfurt am Main offers pretty much everything a shopping heart
desires.
Probably the best-known shopping street in Frankfurt and
at the same time the shopping street with the highest turnover in
Germany is the Zeil in the city center. Along the Zeil and its side
streets you will find all the big brands, but also many smaller
owner-managed shops and some unusual things. Goethestrasse, Frankfurt's
luxury mile with designer brands from all over the world, deserves a
special mention here.
Outside of the city center there are other
recommended shopping streets, such as Berger Strasse in Bornheim,
Leipziger Strasse in Bockenheim, and Schweizer Strasse in Sachsenhausen.
Here you will find a large number of small shops.
There are
weekly markets in almost all parts of Frankfurt. The best-known and
largest weekly market in Frankfurt is the farmers' market on the
Konstablerwache.
Flea markets: Saturdays, alternating weekly from
9 a.m. to 2 p.m.: Flea market on the banks of the Main and in the
Osthafen (Lindleystrasse) • Flea market
There are four major
shopping centers in Frankfurt am Main:
MyZeil in the city center
Skyline Plaza at the main train station
Hessen Center in
Bergen-Enkheim
Northwest Center in the Northwest City (Heddernheim)
The Main-Taunus-Zentrum is no longer within Frankfurt's boundaries,
but is nevertheless visited by many Frankfurters for an extensive
shopping spree.
Sunday shopping has not been open in Frankfurt
since 2017 after the courts repeatedly overturned the Sunday opening.
The last attempt to hold a Sunday shopping in Sachsenhausen failed in
July 2022.
Particular specialties of the region are Ribbsche with cabbage, hand
cheese with music and Frankfurter Grie Soß (Frankfurt Green Sauce).
Handkäs with music is typically served with bread and butter. The guest
usually does not receive a fork, but only a knife with which the hand
cheese is placed piece by piece on the bread and bitten off. The green
sauce consists of seven different herbs, which typically come from the
nurseries in the Oberrad district and are chopped up and stirred into
sour cream or sometimes yoghurt. This mixture is balanced with pepper,
salt, vinegar and sometimes mustard. Boiled or fried potatoes and
hard-boiled eggs are served as a side dish. •
The typical
Frankfurt apple wine, the Ebbelwoi, is drunk from an apple wine glass,
the Geribbde. The Schöbbsche (originally 0.3l, today often 0.25l) is
poured out of the Bembel, a clay jug, the size of which is indicated by
the number of Schöbbsche (e.g. 5'er Bembel). If the cider is too acidic
for you, you can drink it as a G'spritzde, diluted with mineral water.
If that's not enough for you, you can order a sweet G'spritzde, an apple
wine with lemonade or, in the surrounding area, often with orangeade.
But beware! If you order a sweet spritzer in the traditional cider bars
in Sachsenhausen and e.g. T. also Bornheims, then you expose yourself to
the wrath of the staff under certain circumstances, since the addition
of lemonade destroys the character of the cider. Most of these bars make
their own cider and are accordingly proud of the fruits of their labour,
which they dilute at best, but never sweeten. In autumn, people like to
drink the freshly pressed, natural apple juice, which stimulates the
intestinal flora and is sometimes "resoundingly successful". •
Donuts are called Kreppel (singular = plural) and particles are called
pieces. Typical local pastries are Haddekuchen (with apple wine),
Frankfurter Pudding, Frankfurter Kranz and Bethmännchen. The latter is a
marzipan pastry, related to the Frankfurter Brenten, originally eaten
with tea, but now particularly popular at Christmas. The name goes back
to the Frankfurt banking family Bethmann.
As a cosmopolitan city,
the local cuisine has always played a smaller role than in other cities.
French cuisine and Viennese coffee houses were already appreciated by
the bourgeoisie in the 19th century. It is therefore not surprising that
the Frankfurter sausage is almost extinct. The rustication with "genuine
Frankfurt" dishes and "originals" is a relatively new phenomenon and,
curiously enough, increased by the influx of New Frankfurters who are
looking for the "original" to settle in. Many an Italian or Greek
restaurant is decades older than many of the rustically trimmed bars or
pubs with bare oak tables.
The street with a cluster of
restaurants is Freßgass, which stretches to the Alte Oper. There you
will find restaurants and snacks for every taste. In a side street is
Club Voltaire, a left-leaning bistro.
street festivals
Luminale 2020 March 12 - March 15, 2020 − Every 2
years, the Light Culture Biennial accompanies the Light+Building trade
fair. Around 200 light projects throughout the city will bathe houses,
churches and squares in colored light. The Katharinenkirche at the
Hauptwache with the "light diffraction" (letter projection) and the
performance "The light has a face" in the Liebfrauenkirche are
particularly worth seeing.
Opernplatz Festival − 10 days at the end
of June: from 24.06. – 03.07.2020
Christopher Street Day (CSD) • from
17th to 19th July 2020, Konstablerwache.
Mainfest − celebrations by
the river & live music on the Römerberg from 31.07. – 08/03/2020
In
the first half of August, the apple wine festival is held at the
Hauptwache in Frankfurt am Main. The celebrations take place from Sunday
to Thursday from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. and Friday and Saturday from 11 a.m.
to midnight, with a stage program, cider made from old apple varieties,
trendy mixed drinks and cocktails with cider.
Museum Embankment
Festival − end of August: from Friday, August 28 to Sunday, August 30,
2020, on both sides of the Main. Free admission to the museums with the
Museumsuferfest button for €4.
Christmas market on the Römerberg,
Paulsplatz and Mainkai − from 26.11. – 22.12.2015, Monday to Saturday:
10 a.m. to 9 p.m., Sunday: 11 a.m. to 9 p.m
Carillon of the Old St.
Nicholas Church: daily at 9.05 a.m., 12.05 p.m. and 5.05 p.m
Tower
blowing from the balcony of the old Nikolaikirche: Wed and Sat at 6 p.m.
Also: Artists' Christmas market in the Paulskirche and Römerhalle,
Sachsenhausen Christmas market under the Goethe Tower, Swedish Christmas
market in Preungesheim, Christmas markets at Höchst Castle and in
Bornheim
nightlife
If you want to go out in Frankfurt, you
need to know a little about here. The best tips can be found in the
"Journal Frankfurt", which is published monthly.
Culturally,
Frankfurt has a lot to offer, starting with the multi-award-winning
Frankfurt theaters (Schauspielhaus, Oper), alternative entertainment and
cabaret (Mousonturm) and modern dance (The Forsythe Company) to
vaudeville in the Tigerpalast. In addition, Frankfurt has a distinctive
museum landscape. The best known are the Museum of Modern Art, the
Museum of Applied Art, the Schirn Art Gallery and the Städel Art
Institute. Most museums can be found on the Museumsufer on the south
side of the Main.
In addition to the well-known and elegant clubs
in the city center and the gallery near the main train station, the
Uniongelände in Ostend has developed into a hip meeting place. For most
clubs it is advisable to take a jacket with you (you can return it at
the cloakroom) and not to wear a t-shirt.
A good recommendation
is the 22nd Lounge bar on the 22nd floor of the Eurotheum in the city
center (right next to the Main Tower). From here you have a beautiful
view of the city. This is a special experience, especially in winter,
when the city's sea of lights glitters in the dark.
If you like a
mixture of chic and down-to-earth, you should look around in
Sachsenhausen on Schweizer Strasse and Textorstrasse. From the
Äpplerwirtschaft (Aatschel, Fichtekränzi, Gemalte Haus, Wagner) to the
chic bar (Bar Oppenheimer, Keepers Lounge, Hoppers), there is everything
your liver desires. There are other cider taverns in Bornheim (e.g.
Eulenburg) and the 'Rad' in Seckbach.
There are alternatives in
the student Bockenheim (around Leipziger Str.) and in the Nordend
(Berger Str.). But there are also nice places to go out in the city
center around the Katharinen Church (Studio Bar, Helium) and on the
Römer.
Insider tip: Opposite the Goethe-Haus, a small but fine
bar scene has developed in the city center around Kaffee Karin. Just
have a look!
The gay scene mainly goes to Luckys Manhattan
(LM27), Central or Schwejk, all of which are in the so-called "Bermuda
Triangle" near the Konstablerwache, but are sometimes difficult to find
because of the winding streets.
In Alt-Sachsenhausen there is a
colorful mix of traditional apple wine culture, bars (including
Stereobar) and clubs.
Tourism contribution: Since January 1, 2018, the city of Frankfurt
has been charging all guests who stay overnight in the city area for
tourist purposes a tourism contribution of €2 per person and night. The
tourism fee has to be paid at the hotel and is usually added to the
overnight price. The regulation does not apply to work-related stays.
In Frankfurt there is really no shortage of hotel beds, as long as
there is no major trade fair. Whether 3, 4 or 5 stars, everyone will
find a suitable place to stay here. During trade fairs, however, the
hotels are extremely expensive and fully booked, which then also affects
the entire area around Frankfurt, so that it is not possible to switch
to the periphery. But even then, there is still plenty of private
accommodation scattered throughout the city. Overnight stays in
Frankfurt hotels are extremely cheap at the weekend, since business
travelers are mainly in Frankfurt during the week. Overnight stays in
five-star plus hotels are also quite affordable here. The youth hostel
on Schaumainkai, which is also within walking distance of
Alt-Sachsenhausen and the banks of the Main, is a hotel alternative.
(The 1st Wikimania Congress also took place here.) However, private
accommodation is usually available at significantly lower prices and
often offers the advantage that travelers are provided with the right
insider tips for exploring the city.
However, the corona pandemic
and the associated absence of trade fair guests have severely thinned
out the offer in recent years, especially at the upper end. The doldrums
fell u. the well-known luxury hotels Hessischer Hof and the Villa
Kennedy, which once offered one of the largest presidential suites in
Europe.
Individual hotels are listed in the district articles.
Airport hotels are listed in the airport article.
A listing of
hotels is available on the City of Frankfurt website.
The only
campsite in the Frankfurt city area is in Heddernheim an der Nidda.
Youth hostels can mainly be found around the main train station, but
the DJH youth hostel is located south of the Main in Sachsenhausen.
Frankfurt is one of the most important university cities in Germany.
In Frankfurt there are, among others:
the Johann Wolfgang Goethe
University, with 42,000 students one of the largest universities in
Germany
the Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences, formerly the
Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences
the Frankfurt School of
Finance and Management, formerly the University of Banking, one of the
most important private universities in Germany
the University of
Music and Performing Arts
the Städelschule, a renowned art school
However, Frankfurt is not only important in teaching, but also in
research. There are two Max Planck Institutes in the city alone.
Anyone intending to study in Frankfurt should know that Frankfurt has
the fewest places in halls of residence per place of study among the
major German university cities. Shared rooms are therefore in great
demand and hard to come by, especially with low income or student loans,
so that hundreds of students have to sleep in emergency accommodation
every year at the beginning of the semester.
Along with Leipzig,
Frankfurt is one of two locations of the German National Library that
stores every book published in Germany with a mandatory copy. Unusual
books that are not available in any other library can be ordered here
for inspection.
Frankfurt is a commuter city. During the day, the city swells and
becomes a metropolis of millions, in the evening, when commuters drive
to neighboring cities and other communities, the city contracts again.
Nevertheless, the cultural and night scene is very distinctive.
There were 487,400 jobs subject to social security contributions in
2008. Only a third (164,000) lived and worked in Frankfurt. 323,500
people commuted to the city and the trend is rising, 178,000 of them
from the neighboring communities.
In no other German city is the
service industry as prevalent as in Frankfurt. Not only the financial
services industry, management consultancies and lawyers have declared
Frankfurt their capital. The European Central Bank (ECB) is based in
Frankfurt. Advertising and PR or chemical and pharmaceutical companies
also feel at home here. The city has almost as many jobs as residents.
However, there is still significant industry in Frankfurt and the
region. In addition to the Industriepark Höchst, these include B. Opel
in Ruesselsheim. The airport offers around 70,000 jobs.
Although living in Frankfurt is no more dangerous than in other major
German cities, the city feels subjectively much more unsafe. Reasons for
this are:
the city's liberal drug policy, which draws many
addicts from other German cities to Frankfurt. Especially in the station
district, addicts, dealers and used syringes determine the cityscape.
the homeless, who are not more numerous, but clearly more present than
in other major German cities. Hotspots for the homeless are the B level
of the main train station, Niddastrasse in the train station district
and the Eschenheimer Tor underground station in the north of the city
centre. Sensitive people should avoid these areas, especially at night
and early in the morning.
the sometimes very pushy beggars,
especially at the main station, who can be scared away quite easily if
you stubbornly ignore them, look away and keep walking - they don't pose
any real danger.
Statistically, Frankfurt actually has the most
crimes per inhabitant of any major German city after Berlin, which is
why the media occasionally refer to the city as the "crime capital".
However, these statistics are falsified by two things: on the one hand,
the airport is located in the city of Frankfurt and falsifies the
statistics (smuggling, passport offenses, etc.), on the other hand, most
private banks have their headquarters in Frankfurt, so that credit card
misuse, no matter where the world it takes place is included in the
Frankfurt statistics. In addition, the numerous commuters who commute
into the city every day are not included in the statistics.
Anyone who avoids getting involved in conversations, especially at
night, avoids drug users and avoids using public toilets, especially in
the train station district and in the city center (syringes lying around
can transmit infectious diseases such as HIV), actually have nothing to
fear. Families with children should avoid the station district entirely
and use public transport or a taxi.
As in all major German cities, medical care is very good. The
university hospital, which enjoys an excellent reputation, deserves a
special mention.
University Hospital Frankfurt
general
emergency services in Frankfurt a list of medical emergency services in
Frankfurt
Dentist emergency service Current display of dentists on
duty and available dental emergency services
Dental emergency service
Frankfurt Mediation (A&V e.V.): 069-59795360
The Frankfurter is not known to be particularly friendly. However,
one is treated really unfriendly only in exceptional cases. Once you get
used to the rough manners, especially in cider bars, you get along very
well with all the locals. Occasional language problems can be resolved
with a "Huh?" solve, the Hessian universal question word. German is the
universal language, almost everyone can speak English, but the many
commuters mean that many dialects come to the city.
Tourist info
Hauptbahnhof, Hauptbahnhof - Passage. Phone: +49 69 212 38800, email:
info@tcf.frankfurt.de. Open: Mon-Fri 8:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m., Sat-Sun +
public holidays 9:00 a.m. - 6:00 p.m
Römer Tourist Info, Römerberg
27. Tel.: +49 69 212 38800, e-mail: info@tcf.frankfurt.de. Open: Mon-Fri
9:30 a.m. - 5:30 p.m., Sat-Sun + public holidays 10:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m
The City of Frankfurt has created the Frankfurt Asks Me platform with an
integrated defect reporter. Anyone can enter defects in the city on
this, e.g. B. littering and vandalism. The city's service center then
processes the defects entered there.
north-west
Kronberg − Opel Zoo on the B455 in the direction of
Königstein. Only about 1400 animals in 200 animal species from all
continents and climate zones live on a spacious area, including
elephants in the elephant enclosure built at the end of August 2013.
Many animal species are absent. The public Philosophenweg from Kronberg
to Königstein leads through the zoo. Admission: €12, children 3-14
years: €7.
Koenigstein − nice little town on the wooded slopes of the
Taunus with the Koenigstein castle ruins.
Bad Homburg − noble
residential town and spa town with a large spa park.
The Taunus with
its highest mountain, the Großer Feldberg, is right on the doorstep and
can be reached by underground U3. From this mountain and the
Herzbergturm you have great views of the Rhine-Main area.
The old
Roman fort Saalburg was reconstructed.
Behind both places is the
Hessenpark, a large open-air museum with reconstructed old houses from
the area.
To the north lies the Wetterau with Bad Vilbel, Bad Nauheim
and Butzbach, where many meadow orchards invite you to linger.
To the
north-east in the Vogelsberg with excellent hiking and cycling routes.
Heading east from Hanau, north-east through the Kinzig Valley and the
Spessart Nature Park via Gelnhausen to Fulda.
up the Main via Hanau
and Seligenstadt, to Aschaffenburg in Lower Franconia, Miltenberg and
Wertheim to Würzburg.
Direction south-southeast in the Odenwald with
its half-timbered towns of Michelstadt and Erbach to Eberbach am Neckar.
Head south along the Bergstraße from Darmstadt, via Zwingenberg,
Bensheim, Heppenheim, Weinheim to Heidelberg.
Southwest to the Upper
Rhine with the Kühkopf-Knoblochsaue nature reserve, the wine town of
Oppenheim and the Nibelungen town of Worms
Heading west to
Rhineland-Palatinate: Mainz, Rheinhessen (Ingelheim, Bingen am Rhein)
and the Middle Rhine Valley (Bacharach, Oberwesel.
West to Wiesbaden,
the Rheingau (Eltville am Rhein, Rüdesheim am Rhein) and the Middle
Rhine Valley.
All directions: RheinMain Regional Park
bike
rides
Main cycle path
Hess. R3 long-distance cycle route: Rhine -
Main - Kinzig
Hess. Long-distance cycle route R8: Westerwald - Taunus
- Bergstrasse
GrünGürtelRadrundweg around Frankfurt Cycle route
planner
Nidda Cycle Path Regional Park Nidda Cycle Path
Weiltalweg
On weekends from May to October, a bus with a bicycle trailer (route
245) runs between the terminus of the Frankfurt underground (U3)
Oberursel-Hohemark (300 m above sea level) over the Taunus Pass
Sandplacken, via Weilmünster to Weilburg . From the 700m high pass you
can hike and cycle to Weilburg.
The Vulkanradweg and the Vogelsberger
Südbahnradweg in Vogelsberg are also accessible with bicycle buses.
Train journey to Glauburg, Gelnhausen or Wächtersbach.
Overview of
cycle routes in Hesse
Architecture:
Heinz Ulrich Krauss: Frankfurt am Main. Data,
highlights, construction activity. Frankfurt am Main: Societäts-Verlag,
1997, ISBN 3-7973-0626-1. Chronicle with a focus on architecture and
building history
Dieter Bartetzko: Frankfurt's tall buildings.
Frankfurt am Main - Leipzig: Insel, 2001, ISBN 3-458-34353-9.
Representation of the high-rise building in Frankfurt
Ulf Jonak: The
Frankfurt skyline. Frankfurt am Main - New York: Campus, 1997, ISBN
3-593-35822-0. Critical consideration of high-rise construction
Heinz
Schohmann: Frankfurt am Main and surroundings. From the Pfalzsiedlung to
the banking center. Cologne: Dumont, 2003, Dumont Art Travel Guide, ISBN
3-7701-6305-2. with a focus on architecture
Hugo Müller-Vogg:
Skyscrapers in Frankfurt. Frankfurt am Main: Societäts-Verlag, 1999,
ISBN 3-7973-0721-7. Presentation of all skyscrapers in Frankfurt
Various:
Barbara M. Henke, Thomas Kirn, Ruth Rieger: Edition The
German Cities - Frankfurt. Munich: C.J. Bucher, 1994, ISBN
3-7658-0873-3.
Elisabeth Ehrhorn, Carmen Sorgler, Renate Schildheuer:
(S) spires. Frankfurt am Main: Societätsverlag, 1996, ISBN
3-7973-0618-0.
Christian Setzepfandt: Mysterious Frankfurt am Main.
Gudensberg-Same: Wartberg, 2003, ISBN 3-8313-1347-4.
Martin Mosebach:
My Frankfurt. With photographs by Barbara Klemm; Volume 2871. Frankfurt
am Main: Insel-Verlag, 2002, ISBN 3-458-34571-X; Paperback.
Benno
Reifenberg: The Uniqueness of Frankfurt. Frankfurt am Main: Verlag
Waldemar Kramer, 1979, ISBN 3-7829-0220-3.
Selected Frankfurt dialect
poetry. Frankfurt am Main: Verlag Waldemar Kramer, 1966, ISBN
3-7829-0067-7.
novels
Ulrike A. Kucera: Murder summer - a
Frankfurt thriller. Societätsverlag, 2008, ISBN 978-3-7973-1105-4; 320
bound pages. Released for €14.80
Ursula Neeb: The Miracle Man -
Historical Frankfurt Novel. Societätsverlag, 2008, ISBN
978-3-7973-1103-0; 328 bound pages. Released for €14.80
Franconofurd or Francorum vadus is the name of the settlement on the
cathedral hill in the first documentary mentions in 794 in Old Frankish
and Latin. Both means ford of the Franks and refers to a rock barrier in
the subsoil of the Main, which made it possible to cross the river –
which was much wider at the time than it is today – safely at this
point, which is probably slightly above today’s Old Bridge, when the
water level was normal. The ford probably had no strategic importance in
Roman times, since the Roman roads leading from Mogontiacum to the Limes
and into the interior of Germany, such as the Elisabethenstraße,
bypassed the cathedral hill and the swampy Main lowland.
After
the Romans left around the year 260, the cathedral hill was taken over
by the Alamanni. Around 530, the Franks replaced the Alamanni in control
of the Lower Main area. The new rulers probably used the ford as an
important transport route, which is why their trading partners called it
Frankenfurt.
1014-1017 the chronicler Thietmar von Merseburg
wrote down a well-known legend of the founding of the city by
Charlemagne. He connects them to the Saxon Wars:
“The origin of
this place name should no longer remain unclear to you, dear reader. So
now I want to tell you what I've heard from credible men about it. Under
the reign of Emperor Charlemagne, son of King Pepin, war broke out
between his ancestors and our ancestors (the Saxons). In this battle the
Franks were defeated by ours. When they had to go back across the Main,
ignorant of a ford, a hind crossed in front of them and showed them the
way, so to speak, through God's mercy. They followed her and reached the
safe shore in good spirits. After that the place is called Frankfurt.
When the emperor saw himself defeated by the enemy on this campaign, he
was the first to retreat and declare: 'I prefer people to abuse me and
say that I fled from here than that I fell here. For as long as I live I
may hope to avenge the grave shame done to me.'”
– Thietmar von
Merseburg: Chronicon VII, 75
In fact, Charlemagne never waged war
against the Saxons in the Main area. The story of the origin of the name
of Sachsenhausen, as the supposed place of the settlement of captive
Saxons by the victorious emperor, is a legend. It probably goes back to
a legendary mixture with the historical fact that shortly after his
departure in 794 he went into the field against rebellious Saxons in
northern Germany.
Another founding myth of Frankfurt was popular
up until the 18th century, for example in Zedler's Universal Lexicon.
Little is known about him today: Helenos, a son of Priam, is said to
have settled on the Main after fleeing the destroyed Troy and founded a
city called Helenopolis. Frankfurt would therefore have the same
mythical origins as Rome, whose legendary founders, Romulus and Remus,
were descendants of escaped Trojans. Around the year 130 AD, a certain
Francus, a duke of the Hogiers, is said to have restored the old city of
Helenopolis and called it Franckenfurt after his name. Other authors
attributed the name Helenopolis to Empress Helena, the mother of
Constantine the Great. The oldest known mention of the Helenopolis myth
comes from the humanist Johannes Trithemius from the 15th century, other
humanists followed much later. Until the 18th century, Helenopolis was
often used as a synonym for Frankfurt, for example as a place of
printing in books, in numismatics and as a student registration number.
The original form of the name Franconofurd developed into
Frankenfort or Frankinfort in the Middle Ages, and into Franckfort and
Franckfurth in modern times. At the latest since the beginning of the
19th century, the spelling Frankfurt has been established. The suffix am
Main can already be found in the oldest documents, regularly since the
14th century. Colloquially, the official name is usually shortened to
Frankfurt as long as there is no risk of confusion, especially with
Frankfurt (Oder). Even unofficial forms of names such as Frankfurt/Main
or Frankfurt a. M. are common, in rail traffic Frankfurt (Main) is
common. The abbreviations Ffm or FFM are widely used, as well as the
IATA airport code FRA or the vehicle registration number F.
Frankfurt am Main was first mentioned on February 22, 794 in a
document of Charlemagne for the Regensburg monastery of St. Emmeram. The
document, written in Latin, says: "... actum super fluvium Moin in loco
nuncupante Franconofurd" - "given (exhibited) on the river Main in a
place called Frankfurt." proven. A Roman military camp and, in the
Merovingian period, a Frankish royal court were probably established at
the same location. In June 794, important church representatives of the
empire met in the Frankish royal palace at the Synod of Frankfurt.
In 843, Frankfurt temporarily became the most important royal palace
in East Franconia and the site of imperial diets. In 1220, Emperor
Friedrich II abolished the office of Reichsvogt in Frankfurt. This
ministerial was replaced by the imperial mayor appointed by the emperor
as head of the otherwise self-governing citizenry. During the 13th and
14th centuries, the city gained more and more privileges and regalia,
for example the annual autumn fair in 1240 and the spring fair in 1330.
In 1266 the city council, consisting of 42 patricians and master
craftsmen, was mentioned for the first time. Since 1311, the council
elected two mayors annually as city leaders. With the acquisition of the
mayor's office, Frankfurt achieved full sovereignty as an imperial city
in 1372.
The Golden Bull of 1356 confirmed Frankfurt as the
lawful electoral city of the Roman kings, after most royal elections had
taken place here since 1147. From 1562, the imperial coronations also
took place in Frankfurt, most recently in 1792 that of the Habsburg
Franz II. The coronation path, which led from the imperial cathedral of
St. Bartholomew via the market square to the Römer, was reconstructed
between 2012 and 2018 as part of the Dom-Römer project. In 1742,
Frankfurt even became a residential city for almost three years. Since
Emperor Charles VII, who came from the House of Wittelsbach, was unable
to return to his homeland, the Electorate of Bavaria occupied by
Habsburg troops, after his coronation, he was forced to live in the
Palais Barckhaus on the Zeil until October 1744.
With the end of
the Old Empire, the sovereignty of Frankfurt as an imperial city ended.
On July 12, 1806, it fell under the rule of the Prince Primate Karl
Theodor von Dalberg, who united it with the Principality of Regensburg,
the Principality of Aschaffenburg and the Imperial City of Wetzlar to
form an independent state within the Confederation of the Rhine, the
state of the Prince Primate. In 1810 Dalberg ceded the principality of
Regensburg to Bavaria, in exchange for the principality of Hanau and the
principality of Fulda, and became Grand Duke of Frankfurt. In the
short-lived Grand Duchy of Frankfurt, the city of Frankfurt formed a
mairie from 1810 to 1813 and was the capital of the Frankfurt
department, which also included its formerly imperial city villages as
Land-Districtsmairie Frankfurt.
With the collapse of the Napoleonic system, Dalberg abdicated as
Grand Duke of Frankfurt on October 28, 1813. His Grand Duchy was
subordinated to the Central Administration Department for the occupied
territories by the victorious Allies as the General Government of
Frankfurt. On December 14, 1813, the independence of the city and its
territory was restored and its imperial city constitution was
reinstated. The previous prefect Friedrich Maximilian von Günderrode
took over the provisional management of the administration as mayor.
At the Congress of Vienna, the Kingdom of Bavaria planned the
annexation of Frankfurt, but on June 8, 1815, the Congress decided to
restore Frankfurt as a free city within the German Confederation. Along
with Hamburg, Bremen and Lübeck, it was one of four free cities that
were able to maintain their traditional freedom of the city into the
modern age. The Free City of Frankfurt gave itself a new constitution,
the Supplementary Constitutional Act, and the motto Strongly in the
Right. The Bundestag of the German Confederation established itself in
Frankfurt. In 1833 the Frankfurt guard storm, an attempt to start a
general revolution in Germany, failed. In 1848 the March Revolution
broke out in Germany. The convened National Assembly met in Frankfurt's
Paulskirche and, with the Paulskirche constitution, drew up the first
all-German and democratic constitution in Germany.
In 1863 the
Frankfurt Princes' Day, an attempt to reform the German Confederation,
ended unsuccessfully. In the German War of 1866, Frankfurt remained
loyal to the federal government. Public opinion tended to be on the side
of Austria and the Kaiser, although there had been voices in Frankfurt
for some time calling for a voluntary union with Prussia for economic
and foreign policy reasons. On July 18, during the Main campaign, the
city was occupied by the Prussian Main Army and heavy contributions were
imposed. On October 2nd, Prussia annexed the city, which finally lost
its independence; the urban district of Frankfurt was assigned to the
administrative district of Wiesbaden in the province of Hesse-Nassau,
and payment of the contributions was later waived. In 1868, Prussia
introduced a municipal constitution in Frankfurt with a mayor as head of
the city. As a symbol of reconciliation, the Franco-Prussian War was
officially ended in Frankfurt in 1871 with the Peace of Frankfurt.
The annexation was advantageous for the economic development of the
city into an industrial center with rapid population growth. Between
1877 and 1910, Frankfurt incorporated numerous surrounding towns in
several stages and increased its area from 70 to 135 square kilometers.
It finally became Germany's largest city by area for a short time at the
beginning of the 20th century. With the rapid growth in population, the
city expanded its public infrastructure, including numerous schools,
several Main bridges, water supply, sewage system, a modern professional
fire brigade, cattle and slaughterhouse, the market hall, trams, train
stations and ports. After industry had initially settled mainly in
Bockenheim, along the Mainzer Landstraße and in Sachsenhausen, the
Osthafen with an industrial area was created between 1909 and 1912, the
newly developed area of which was as large as the entire urban area
north of the Main that was built up at the end of the 19th century . In
addition to the traditional Frankfurt industries, foundries and metal
goods, type foundries and printers, breweries, chemical factories and,
after the International Electrotechnical Exhibition in 1891, also an
electrical industry emerged. In 1914 the university, donated by
Frankfurt citizens, was opened.
Frankfurt was spared from
destruction during the First World War, but suffered from a poor supply
of food and other everyday necessities due to its location as a Prussian
border town with a Hessian and Bavarian hinterland. As a result of the
November Revolution of 1918, there were riots and intermittent street
fighting that lasted until the end of 1919.
In the 1920s,
Frankfurt experienced a cultural boom, among other things through its
theaters and the urban planning program of the New Frankfurt (known
worldwide for the Frankfurt kitchen, the archetype of the modern fitted
kitchen). In 1925 the first international Workers' Olympics took place
in the newly built Waldstadion.
During the Nazi era, 11,134 Jews
were deported from Frankfurt. Only 367 of them survived the Holocaust.
During World War II, Allied air raids on Frankfurt destroyed around 70
percent of the buildings, including almost the entire old and inner
city. The medieval cityscape, which was almost complete until 1944, was
lost as a result. On March 26, 1945, troops of the 3rd US Army, coming
from Sachsenhausen, entered the city center via the Wilhelmsbrücke,
which had only been partially destroyed. On March 29, 1945, hostilities
in the city ended and the last Wehrmacht units withdrew in the direction
of Taunus and Wetterau.
After the end of the war, the US armed forces set up their European
headquarters in Frankfurt. Plans to give the extended urban area a
special status as an independent district of Frankfurt, analogous to the
District of Columbia, proved to be impractical. In 1946 the city was
assigned to the newly formed state of Greater Hesse. In 1947 the
Economic Council of the Bizone, which was extended to the Trizone in
1948, took up its seat in Frankfurt. In the election for the federal
capital on May 10, 1949, Frankfurt lost to Konrad Adenauer's favorite
Bonn. A parliament building had already been built in Frankfurt. Since
then it has housed the Hessian Broadcasting Corporation.
Despite
the defeat in the capital issue, the city once again developed into an
economic metropolis and the most important financial center in
continental Europe during the period of the economic miracle. The
reconstruction in the 1950s was not based on the old urban structures.
Large parts of the former old town are still shaped today by the simple
modernist functional buildings and traffic axes that were created at
that time. As a result of the division of Germany, Frankfurt took on
metropolitan functions as the seat of companies, associations and
federal institutions and became the seat of the European Central Bank in
1998.
All world religions are represented in Frankfurt. Until 2001, the
majority of Frankfurters belonged to one of the Christian denominations.
Due to secularization and immigration of non-Christian population
groups, the proportion of Christians in the population is steadily
decreasing. In 2020, 19.0% of the residents were Catholic, 15.1% were
Protestant and 65.9% were non-denominational or belonged to other faith
communities.
Since the Reformation, the city has been considered
traditionally Protestant, although Catholic community life never
completely died out. Due to immigration and incorporation, the
proportion of Catholics has gradually increased since the 18th century
and has been greater than that of Protestants since 1995.
About
6,500 Frankfurters belong to the Frankfurt Jewish community.[50]
According to an estimate published in 2007, around 75,000 Muslims lived
in Frankfurt at the end of 2006.
A small church existed on the
site of the cathedral as early as the 7th century. From the end of the
12th century, numerous other churches and chapels were built in quick
succession, some as foundations from Frankfurt citizens, some as
religious establishments.
In 1533 the Free Imperial City
introduced the Reformation. After the Augsburg Interim of 1548, the
Catholic collegiate churches and monasteries in Frankfurt were returned
to the Catholic Church in order to avoid conflict with the Catholic
Emperor and not to jeopardize city privileges (especially the fairs and
imperial elections). The few remaining Catholics had freedom of belief
since the Augsburg Religious Peace of 1555, but until 1806 they were
only able to acquire citizenship in exceptional cases. Persecuted
Huguenots came from France and created the first community of Réfugiés
in Germany in 1554. In 1558, Protestant refugees from England presented
the English monument as a gift for the city's hospitality. The Reformed
Church was not allowed to build its own churches in Frankfurt until
1786. In 1866, the Lutheran and Reformed congregations merged to form a
Frankfurt state church.
In 1933, under pressure from the state,
the Frankfurt State Church merged with the Evangelical Churches of
Hesse-Darmstadt and Nassau to form the Evangelical Church of
Nassau-Hessen, which in 1947 became the Evangelical Church in Hesse and
Nassau (EKHN). Bergen-Enkheim, which was incorporated in 1976, still
belongs to the Kurhessen-Waldeck evangelical church. The Evangelical
Church Congress has taken place four times in Frankfurt, namely in 1956,
1975, 1987 and 2001. In 2021 the third Ecumenical Church Congress was
held in Frankfurt. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, almost all events
were broadcast digitally.
Until 1917, the then 86,000 Catholics
in Frankfurt formed a common municipality, after which several parishes
gradually emerged. Most of the Catholic communities belong to the
diocese of Limburg, only Bergen-Enkheim to the diocese of Fulda and the
districts of Harheim, Nieder-Erlenbach and Nieder-Eschbach, which were
incorporated in 1972, belong to the diocese of Mainz. The German
Catholic Day has been a guest in the city three times, namely in 1863,
1882 and 1921.
In addition to the two major denominations,
orthodox churches, ancient oriental churches, free churches and other
denominations are represented in Frankfurt, including the Old Catholic
Church, the New Apostolic Church and Jehovah's Witnesses. About 30
evangelical groups have come together under the umbrella of the
Evangelical Alliance Frankfurt.
A Jewish community is first
mentioned in Frankfurt in 1150. Twice, in 1241 and 1349, the Frankfurt
Jews were victims of pogroms in the Middle Ages. From 1462 to 1796 they
had to live in a ghetto, the Judengasse. In 1806, Prince Primate Karl
Theodor von Dalberg decreed equal rights for all Jews and Christians. In
1816, the Free City of Frankfurt partially restricted the civil rights
of Jews again in the Supplementary Act. Between August and October 1819,
Frankfurt was the scene of the anti-Jewish Hep-Hep riots, during which
numerous riots and incidents broke out in over 80 cities and towns in
the German Confederation and across its borders next to Würzburg, the
most severe excesses of violence. For four days, the city was in a state
of emergency due to massive violent riots. It was not until 1864 that
Frankfurt became the third German state after Hamburg and Baden to grant
unrestricted equality to Jews.
Around 1930 about 28,000 Jews
lived in Frankfurt. Almost all were deported or expelled during the
National Socialist era, and the four large synagogues were destroyed
during the November pogroms of 1938. 11,134 Frankfurt Jews were deported
during the Holocaust. By the end of the war only about 160 had survived
in the city. Shortly after the end of the war, a new Jewish community
was founded by deported Eastern European Jews. With around 6,500
members, it is one of the largest congregations in the Federal Republic
today.[50] The largest synagogue in Frankfurt is the Westend synagogue.
The Nuur Mosque of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, built in
Sachsenhausen in 1959, was the first mosque in Frankfurt and one of the
first in Germany. There are now around 35 mosques of various Islamic
faiths in Frankfurt.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints (Mormons) has its headquarters for the Central Europe area in
Frankfurt am Main (Eckenheim). There are also two communities in
Eckenheim and Höchst. In 1987, the Frankfurt Temple in Friedrichsdorf
(Hochtaunuskreis) was the first Mormon temple in what was then the
Federal Republic of Germany.
The Scientology organization, which
originated in the United States, has maintained a branch in Frankfurt's
Bahnhofsviertel since 1971. Outside of Frankfurt, in Hofheim-Langenhain,
the only house of Bahai worship in Europe has been located since 1964.
The consecration hall of the Unitarian Free Religious Community, which
was founded in 1845 and is recognized as a public corporation, is
located in downtown Frankfurt and has over 1,000 members.
The city lies on the northern edge of the Upper Rhine Plain on both
sides of the Lower Main south-east of the Taunus. With its metropolitan
area, it forms the center of the Rhine-Main area. About a third of the
city area is designated as the Frankfurt green belt conservation area.
This includes the Frankfurt city forest, one of the largest city forests
in Germany. The urban area stretches 23.4 kilometers from east to west
and 23.3 kilometers from north to south.
The city has its highest
natural point at the Berger Warte on the Berger Rücken in the Seckbach
district at 212.6 meters above sea level. Its lowest point is on the
banks of the Main in Sindlingen at 88 meters above sea level.
The
center of gravity and the geographical center of today's urban area are
in the Bockenheim district near the Westbahnhof, i.e. outside the
historic city center. This goes back to the incorporations to the west,
so Offenbach, which is not incorporated, is closer to the city center
than many districts of Frankfurt.
Frankfurt borders in the west on the Main-Taunus-Kreis (town of Hattersheim am Main, municipality of Kriftel, towns of Hofheim am Taunus and Kelkheim (Taunus), townships of Liederbach am Taunus and Sulzbach (Taunus), towns of Schwalbach am Taunus and Eschborn), in the northwest to the Hochtaunuskreis (cities of Steinbach (Taunus), Oberursel (Taunus) and Bad Homburg vor der Höhe), in the north to the Wetteraukreis (cities of Karben and Bad Vilbel), in the north-east to the Main-Kinzig-Kreis (municipality of Niederdorfelden and the city of Maintal). ), in the southeast to the city of Offenbach am Main, in the south to the district of Offenbach (city of Neu-Isenburg) and in the southwest to the district of Groß-Gerau (cities of Mörfelden-Walldorf, Rüsselsheim am Main, Raunheim and Kelsterbach).
Most of Frankfurt's urban area belongs to the western lower Main plain, to the east to the Hanau-Seligenstädter Depression and to the extreme north to the Wetterau. Geologically, the four river terraces of the Main and Nidda, which have been formed since the younger Pliocene and in the Pleistocene, can be identified in the city area. The highest terrace consists of Taunus rocks and can only be found in the city area in the Berger Rücken area. On the upper terrace of 170 to 120 meters are the northern and north-eastern parts of the city, which drop steeply to the north-west to the Nidda and to the south on the Bornheimer Hang and the Röderberg, as well as the south of Sachsenhausen with the Mühlberg and the Sachsenhäuser Berg. The middle terrace is at an altitude of between 100 and 115 meters. It can be seen in the urban area, for example in the Kelsterbacher Terrasse and on the steep bank of the old town of Höchst. The lowest terrace between 95 and 90 meters was formed in the Holocene. It accompanies the Main on both sides. On it are the cathedral hill, the historic nucleus of the city, and the Carmelite hill. In some places in the city, for example in Bockenheim (Basaltstraße) and in the city forest on Schwarzsteinkautweg, layers of Vogelsberg basalt from the Miocene can be found in the subsoil, the thickness of which reaches up to 14 meters.
The oldest temperature measurements date from December 1695 and are
handed down in the chronicle of Achilles Augustus von Lersner.
Continuous series of measurements have existed since 1826, albeit for
different stations.
In Frankfurt there are several weather
stations of the German Weather Service. The airport station outside the
city center has been recording the weather since 1949. Since 1985 there
has also been the Westend station on the Westend campus of the Goethe
University in Frankfurt, which represents the climate of the more
densely built-up inner city. When comparing the data from both stations,
it is noticeable that the Westend station often registers higher
temperatures, because the heat island effect ensures that it is often
warmer in downtown Frankfurt than in the surrounding area.
Due to
its location on the northern edge of the Upper Rhine Plain, Frankfurt,
along with other major cities such as Freiburg, Karlsruhe, Mannheim and
Darmstadt, is one of the warmest cities in Germany. The mean annual
temperature at the airport weather station was 10.6 °C between 1981 and
2010, and even 12.1 °C at the Westend weather station between 2017 and
2022.
Spring arrives in the region very early, so apple blossoms
often begin in early to mid-April. In March, 10 °C to 15 °C are usually
reached during the day, in May over 20 °C. In March, temperatures around
and over 25 °C were reached, in April and May over 30 °C. It is often
dry and sunny.
In summer, the average daily temperatures range
between 18 and 22 °C, with daily temperatures usually reaching values
between 24 and 30 °C. In midsummer, longer phases with more than 30 °C
during the day are not uncommon, although it is relatively sunny in
summer. As a rule, there are 60 to 80 summer days a year, in 2018 there
were even 108, and 10 to 30 hot days. The record is 43, also set in
2018. Around 5 to 10 tropical nights are possible per year. The highest
temperature of 40.2 °C was measured on July 25, 2019 in the west end.
In autumn, especially in September, a few dry, late-summer warm days
are still possible. The maximum temperatures range from 8 to 12 °C in
November to 20-24 °C in September, and over 30 °C were still measured in
September.
After the Lower Rhine around Cologne, the winters are
the second mildest here. Maximum temperatures are in the
mid-single-digit range, and freezing temperatures are not as common as
in other regions. An average of 20 to 60 frost days have been reported
in the West End in recent years. There are at most ice days in the low
double-digit range, since 2013 exclusively under 10. The lowest
temperature of −23.8 °C was measured on January 19, 1940 in the west
end; the lowest temperature since 1985 was −15.0 °C, measured on
February 9, 1986. There can be snowy days between November and March.
The snowiest months since 1985 were January 1997 and February 1986, each
with 23 days. Significantly more snow days are measured in the Taunus.
The surrounding low mountain ranges, in particular the Taunus, often
act as a protective shield against rain and clouds for the region, which
is why the city of Frankfurt, with an average annual precipitation of
around 600 mm, is one of the drier and with 1600 to 2000 hours of
sunshine a year one of the sunniest cities in Germany . In the region
northwest of the Taunus main ridge, there are often significantly fewer
hours of sunshine than in the Rhine-Main area.
According to the
climate classification according to Köppen and Geiger, this is a climate
of the Cfb type, which is dominant in Germany. Due to the increased
accumulation of summer months with an average temperature of 22 °C in
the course of climate change, it is to be expected in the foreseeable
future that Frankfurt and the rest of the Upper Rhine Graben will fall
into the warmer, subtropical classification Cfa. This classification is
typically found in Milan, northern Italy.
The clean air plan for Frankfurt drawn up by the state of Hesse dates back to 2005 and was updated for the first time in 2011. According to the bioclimate map of the German Weather Service, Frankfurt is located in a polluted conurbation. From an air hygiene point of view, the often low wind speeds and, in connection with this, the frequency of times with unfavorable air exchange are characteristic. An essential part of the clean air plan was the establishment of an environmental zone covering large parts of the city area on January 1, 2012. The clean air plan was not able to reduce the pollution caused by nitrogen oxides, especially nitrogen dioxide, below the limit values of the 39th BImSchV, which have been in force since 2010. “The main emitter in Frankfurt am Main is motor vehicle traffic, followed by shares from air traffic, industry and building heating. The prevailing exceedances of limit values are mainly caused by motor vehicle traffic. On busy roads, diesel-powered passenger cars are the main cause with up to 80%.” The limit value for nitrogen dioxide can therefore often not be met in the Frankfurt city area in busy areas. The Administrative Court of Wiesbaden therefore decided on September 5, 2018: “The clean air plan for the city of Frankfurt am Main includes zone-specific driving bans for motor vehicles with petrol or gas-powered Otto engines below the Euro 3 emissions standard, and for all vehicles with diesel engines below the Euro 5 emissions standard from February 1st, 2019, and for motor vehicles with diesel engines that meet the Euro 5 emission standard from September 1st, 2019, in addition to a concept for parking space management and for the short-term retrofitting of the bus fleet operating in the inner city area with SCRT filters.” The diesel driving ban would affect around 200,000 vehicles in the Frankfurt metropolitan area . The city and state were able to bring about an appeal against the driving ban judgment at the Hessian Administrative Court in Kassel and temporarily avert a diesel driving ban. The second update of the clean air plan, which came into force on December 28, 2020, is associated with a comprehensive package of measures that, among other things, provides for improved parking space management, replacement of municipal vehicles, establishment of bus and bicycle lanes and a speed limit of 40 km/h within the system ring. If the measures do not result in compliance with the limit values, traffic restrictions for older diesel and petrol vehicles will be imposed in particularly polluted areas with effect from October 1, 2021.
The city is statistically and administratively divided into 46
districts, which are numbered up to 47 (the number 23 is omitted, but
for technical reasons it is also assigned to the Praunheim district).
These in turn are made up of 124 boroughs, 448 constituencies and 6,130
blocks.
Politically, the city is divided into 16 local districts,
each of which has a local council chaired by a mayor. The places
incorporated in the 1970s still form their own districts.
The
largest district in terms of area and population is Sachsenhausen; This
is followed by the population of Nordend and Bockenheim. In the
statistical yearbook, the few inhabitants of the district of
Frankfurt-Flughafen are assigned to the district of Sachsenhausen-Süd.
The smallest district by area is the old town.
Up to the 19th century, information about the development of
Frankfurt's population was based on inaccurate estimates, and only from
around 1810 on census results and official statistics. In the Middle
Ages, Frankfurt was one of the medium-sized German cities with around
10,000 inhabitants. The population exceeded 20,000 in the 17th century,
30,000 in the mid-18th century and 40,000 around 1810. By the end of the
Free City of Frankfurt in 1866, the city's population had risen to over
90,000, of whom around 78,000 lived within the ramparts. About 7,000
people still live there today.
In 1875 Frankfurt had 100,000
inhabitants. From around 1880 it was one of the ten largest cities in
Germany. In 1910, with 414,576 inhabitants, it ranked ninth in Germany
and fourth among major Prussian cities. By the start of World War II,
the city's population had increased to 553,464.
During World War
II, more than 4,800 civilians and 12,700 Frankfurt soldiers lost their
lives, and almost 12,000 of Frankfurt's Jewish residents (out of 30,000
before) were murdered in the Holocaust. At the end of 1945, 358,000
people were still living in the city, where about half of the homes had
been destroyed by the war.
In 1951 the number of inhabitants
again exceeded the level of 1939 and reached a provisional high of
691,257 in 1963. Due to migration losses to the surrounding area, the
number of inhabitants fell to 592,411 by 1986, since then it has risen
again to 759,224 (as of December 31, 2021). The population growth is a
consequence of the city's economic dynamics, the designation of new
settlement and residential areas as well as the change in the age
structure due to the arrival of young families.
According to the
regionalized population projection up to 2040 published in June 2015,
the Statistics and Elections Office expects the strong population growth
of recent years to continue. On February 18, 2019, Frankfurt had over
750,000 inhabitants for the first time. Around 764,000 inhabitants are
expected in 2020, around 810,000 in 2030 and around 830,000 in 2040.
According to a study by the German Economic Institute (IW), Frankfurt's
average age is falling the fastest in Germany due to the ongoing influx
of predominantly young people. In 2017 it was 40.6 years.
30
percent of the 753,626 residents registered as having their main
residence in Frankfurt on December 31, 2021 do not have German
citizenship. Apart from a few surrounding communities, this is the
highest proportion of foreigners of all Hessian communities. According
to the Integrity and Diversity Monitoring report presented in June 2017
by the City Office for Multicultural Affairs, 51.2 percent of Frankfurt
residents had a migration background in 2015, of which around a third
did not immigrate themselves.
Until 1866, the urban area of Frankfurt am Main consisted of the city
district with today’s old town, city center, train station district,
Gutleutviertel, Gallus, Westend, Nordend, Ostend, Riederwald and
Sachsenhausen, including the Frankfurt City Forest, and the rural
district with the eight villages of Bornheim , Hausen, Niederursel (half
with the Grand Duchy of Hesse), Bonames, Nieder-Erlenbach, Dortelweil,
Oberrad and Niederrad. After the annexation of the Free City of
Frankfurt by Prussia, its former territory formed the urban district of
Frankfurt am Main.
From 1877 the municipalities of the urban
district, and in 1910 also of the district of Frankfurt formed in 1885,
were gradually incorporated into the city of Frankfurt. The last
incorporation took place in 1977. Of the former Frankfurt villages, only
Dortelweil is not part of the city again.
In today's Frankfurt
urban area there are some deserted areas, i.e. former settlements or
villages that have been abandoned over time.
old town and downtown
As with other major German cities,
Frankfurt's cityscape changed radically after the Second World War. This
was due to the bomb damage from the air raids on Frankfurt am Main and
the subsequent reconstruction, which often ignored the old city plan, to
which the city owes a car-friendly road network and a rather
suburban-looking old town development in the style of the 1950s and
1960s.
Little remains of one of the largest contiguous old towns
in Germany, which had never been devastated by wars or major fires since
the High Middle Ages. Of around 3,000 half-timbered houses, only two
survived largely unscathed, the Wertheim house at the Fahrtor and the
house at Mainkai 40, which, like most of Frankfurt's half-timbered
houses in the past, does not show visible half-timbering, but is
plastered. However, from the middle of the 19th century until the First
World War, street breakthroughs were made (Braubachstraße) and entire
quarters were demolished (Judengasse). In the center of the historic old
town is the Römerberg, one of the most famous town squares in Germany.
The buildings lining the edge of the square are reconstructions or new
buildings from the 1950s and 1980s.
The boundaries of the
Frankfurt-Altstadt district correspond to the course of the old city
wall of the 12th century, the so-called Staufenmauer. This roughly
corresponds to the streets Neue Mainzer
Straße-Kaiserstraße-Roßmarkt-Zeil-Kurt-Schumacher-Straße. In the old
town are the Frankfurt Imperial Cathedral and the Paulskirche, known as
the venue of the German National Assembly of 1848. Matthäus Merian was a
graphic artist who depicted the old Frankfurt of the 17th century in
detailed city views. Carl Friedrich Mylius was very important for the
precise photographic documentation of Frankfurt in the 19th century.
Today's inner city, part of the old town that was extended as
Neustadt from 1333, underwent major changes in the early 19th century.
The baroque city fortifications with their large bastions, which had
surrounded the old and new towns since the 17th century, were torn down
and instead the ramparts were created as a ring-shaped park around the
old city. The swampy fishing field was drained and built on uniformly.
The city planner Georg Hess wrote a statute that regulated what the new
buildings should look like. He demanded that the builders stick to the
style of classicism. In this city quarter, which was also largely
destroyed, only a few examples of Frankfurt classicism have survived,
such as the new Hospital zum Heilig Geist, built from 1835, and the old
city library, built between 1820 and 1825 and partially destroyed in
1944, which was rebuilt true to the original in 2005 as the "literature
house". has been. In 1827, the wall servitude stipulated that the
ramparts, which had been converted into footpaths, were not to be built
on. This provision still applies, even if the city has allowed
individual exceptions (Alte Oper, Schauspielhaus, the Hilton Hotel
originally built as a Stadtbad Mitte).
At the end of the 19th
century, the Hauptwache developed into the heart of the city. The Zeil
became the main shopping street. The baroque St. Catherine's Church,
built in 1678-1681 at the entrance to the Zeil, today the largest
Protestant church in Frankfurt, is closely linked to the Goethe family.
Repeated, radical structural changes characterize Frankfurt's city
center and give back previously inaccessible areas to public -
especially mercantile - use. In February 2009, for example, the MyZeil
shopping center was opened on the Zeil shopping street on the former
site of the Frankfurt am Main post office and Telekom between
Eschenheimer Tor and Zeil, flanked by two high-rise buildings with
office and hotel use, as well as the one built between 1737 and 1741,
which is part of the city's history Important Palais Thurn und Taxis,
which was destroyed in 1944, has been reconstructed true to the original
in a somewhat smaller form. Among other things, the telecommunications
tower, one of the first skyscrapers in Frankfurt from 1956, was
demolished for the project named Palaisquartier. The building ensemble
was completed in mid-2010. The Frankfurter Rundschau building, built in
1953, was demolished on the property directly to the north to make way
for residential and commercial buildings. The former Degussa site
between Mainkai, Neuer Mainzer Straße and Weißfrauenstraße was also
completely redesigned in 2010-2018. In 2018 work began on building over
the former Deutsche Bank site on Roßmarkt with a new quarter towered
over by four high-rise buildings. Here, the Deutsche Bank high-rise, a
first-generation Frankfurt high-rise, falls victim to the new
development. The project, called Four, is scheduled to be completed in
2023.
Another major change was the demolition of the technical
town hall in the old town center between the cathedral and Römerberg in
2010. From 2014 to 2018, as part of the Dom-Römer project, the historic
floor plan with the streets Markt and Hühnermarkt was recreated more
than 70 years after its destruction. Among the 35 new buildings, 15 are
reconstructions of former old town houses, designated as creative
replicas, including buildings of urban significance such as the Golden
Scale House, the New Red House, the Golden Lamb, part of the Rebstockhof
and the Esslinger House. The Archaeological Garden with the excavations
of a Roman settlement and the Carolingian royal palace was built over
with the Stadthaus am Markt to permanently protect the oldest traces of
settlement in Frankfurt from the weather and to keep them accessible.
Since around 1830, the districts of Westend, Nordend and Ostend have
emerged outside of the ramparts. After the main station was built in the
1890s, the station district was also built on the site of the three
western stations that previously bordered directly to the west of the
plant ring.
The three first-mentioned parts of the city and
Sachsenhausen, south of the Main, grew particularly rapidly as
residential areas, especially after the annexation by Prussia. Just one
percent of the population lives within the former city walls. Up until
1866, the development was rather haphazard with the development of the
so-called "gardening zone" outside the ramparts, which can still be seen
in the "crooked" streets and the isolated garden houses of the
classicist era. After this area seemed to have been exhausted by
constant densification, development continued along the wide arterial
roads, all of which were called country roads, in the direction of the
suburbs. So on the Eschersheimer Landstrasse, the Eckenheimer
Landstrasse, Friedberger Landstrasse or the Bockenheimer Landstrasse. In
Prussian times, a chessboard-like street grid was then developed on the
drawing board, which was broken up from polygonal squares in favor of
special visual relationships, for example to church buildings, which was
typical of the time. The Frankfurter Alleenring, built at the beginning
of the 20th century under Lord Mayor Franz Adickes, encloses this urban
expansion as a ring road with a wide, green central reservation. In
large areas it follows the course of the old Frankfurt Landwehr.
They were usually built in the form of a closed block edge with four to
five floors - and the existing classicist villas were largely demolished
and the large garden plots were subdivided. Exceptions were the villas
of the Rothschild and Bethmann families (all destroyed in World War II)
and the Holzhausenschlößchen built in the 18th century on the site of a
moated castle, whose parks offer the residents of the surrounding
districts welcome opportunities for relaxation. As a local peculiarity,
a restrained late classicism dominated in many places until 1880, and
even the subsequent architecture, built more in the "Wilhelminian"
taste, never developed the representative splendor of multi-storey
housing in the more commercial-minded city, as it did in other cities
such as Wiesbaden that had grown rapidly at the time , Leipzig or Berlin
is known.
The districts of Bornheim and Bockenheim, incorporated
in 1877 and 1895, were integrated into the city, as were Heddernheim,
Eckenheim and Eschersheim, expanded and connected to the Frankfurt tram
system, but were able to retain their own character as secondary
centers.
Typical of the time was the east-west divide in the
quality and demands of the development. While the newly built
Bahnhofsviertel was considered the noblest business district around 1900
and the Westend the most elegant, upper-class residential area, the
Nordend, Bornheim and Ostend were districts of the middle bourgeoisie. A
certain special position was occupied by Ostend, which, like
Fischerfeld, traditionally had a large Jewish population, and in which
many institutions of the Jewish community were concentrated, such as the
hospital and the orphanage on Röderberg. The large orthodox synagogue
built between 1905 and 1907 on the Friedberger site (destroyed in 1938)
was considered a district landmark, as was the wholesale market hall
built in the 1920s. The working class was concentrated in the vicinity
of the large factories around the main train station in the Gutleut and
Gallus quarters and in the Riederwald district, which was created as
part of the Osthafen planning. As a result of the Nazi rule and the
carpet bombing of the Second World War, these conditions changed
fundamentally. The former residents of the west end were drawn to the
Taunus suburbs, the largely destroyed east end hardly recovered for
decades. A new sense of citizenship emerged during the housing warfare
of the 1960s and 1970s, when numerous Gründerzeit buildings were
demolished, converted or replaced with high-rise office buildings to
create office space in the Bahnhofsviertel and Westend. The north end
and Bornheim developed into centers of the burgeoning green movement. In
the course of gentrification, these “scene quarters” have become the
focus of real estate investors and developers, as has the Ostend after
the new construction of the European Central Bank. Corresponding
developments are foreseeable in this former working-class part of the
city due to the Europaviertel, which is being built on the site of the
former goods station, with the Skyline Plaza shopping center on the edge
of the Gallusviertel.
In addition to the ramparts, other green
spaces were created in the city from the 19th century, most of which go
back to the parks of wealthy Frankfurt families. In the district of
Nordend-Ost, for example, is the Bethmannpark with its Chinese Garden of
Heavenly Peace. In the north end are the Holzhausenpark and the
Günthersburgpark. Further west in the Westend district is the
Grüneburgpark, which includes a Greek Orthodox church and a Korean
garden. The Palmengarten is an internationally renowned botanical garden
that has existed since 1871, which cultivates around 2500 plant species
and houses attractions such as the Papageno music theater or the
Palmen-Express park railway. Right next door is the university's former
botanical garden, which was taken over by the Palmengarten after the
botanical institute moved to the Riedberg. These three adjoining parks
form the largest downtown green area in Frankfurt. The Ostpark in the
Ostend was the first public park in Frankfurt in 1907 and was designed
as a place of recreation for residents and workers in the adjacent
industrial areas.
In 1925, New Frankfurt was started as an extensive urban development program. In 1925, Mayor Ludwig Landmann appointed the architect Ernst May as city planning officer, who from then on managed all activities and surrounded himself with a team of young architects, technicians, artists and designers in order to anchor the project in the city in the long term. In terms of urban planning, the incorporated villages were designed to grow together and the city was enriched with infrastructure projects and parks. In addition, pioneering technologies for construction and industrial design were tested and used. Well-known buildings include the Großmarkthalle and the Gesellschaftshaus of the Palmengarten and settlements such as Praunheim, Römerstadt and Westhausen in the north, the Bornheimer Hang settlement in the east, the Hellerhofsiedlung and the Heimatsiedlung in the south. Design highlights include the Frankfurt kitchen and the Futura font.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the districts north of the city
center were incorporated in several stages. Some of these parts of the
city had belonged to the Free City of Frankfurt until 1866, while others
had never been connected to Frankfurt before. Around 1914, Frankfurt was
one of the largest cities in Germany in terms of area.
The urban
area continued to grow in 1928 through incorporations. The city of
Höchst am Main enriched Frankfurt with an old town that is still very
well preserved and has been a listed building since 1972. The oldest
building in Frankfurt is also located there, the Justinuskirche. The
latest incorporations took place in 1972 and 1977 in the Northeast. Some
of these districts have retained their rural character to this day
(Kalbach, Harheim, Nieder-Eschbach and Nieder-Erlenbach; and
Bergen-Enkheim in the east).
The Frankfurt green belt extends in a ring around the densely
populated city center. It consists of three different landscapes, the
Berger Rücken in the northeast of the city, the Niddatal along the
entire course of the Frankfurt city area in the west and north, and the
Frankfurt City Forest in the south. The green belt covers over 8,000
hectares, which corresponds to about a third of the Frankfurt city area.
It was established in 1991 as one of the first green belts in the world
with a municipal statute, the Green Belt Constitution, and is part of
the 10,850 hectare green belt and green belt landscape protection area
in the city of Frankfurt am Main, which has been designated since 1994.
The landscape protection area is divided into two zones that are
protected from development and changes in use. Zone I includes green
areas and gardens as well as sports, leisure and recreation facilities,
Zone II forests and arable land, wooded areas and fallow land, meadows,
floodplains and wetlands. Parts of the green belt merge seamlessly into
the even larger protection and recreation area Regionalpark RheinMain.
In the Grüneburgpark, on the Bornheimer Hang and in the Ostpark as well
as in the Sinai Wilderness, foothills of the green belt extend almost
into the city centre.
The Frankfurt city forest is one of the
largest inner-city forests in Germany and covers the southern parts of
Schwanheim, Niederrad, Sachsenhausen and Oberrad as well as the northern
part of the airport district. In the Frankfurt green belt are the
Niddapark, laid out in 1989 for the Federal Horticultural Show, the
Lohrberg and Huthpark public parks, the Biegwald and the Niedwald, the
Fechenheimer Mainbogen, the Sossenheimer Unterfeld and the Schwanheimer
Unterfeld with the nature reserve Schwanheimer Düne, which were created
after the First World War. Other nature reserves in the green belt are
the Enkheimer Ried, the Seckbacher Ried, the Mühlbachtal of
Bergen-Enkheim, the Harheimer Ried and the Riedwiesen.