Frankfurt mixes business with pleasure – as long as you know where to look.
What makes Frankfurt unique?
The Frankfurt of common conception and the Frankfurt of reality are very different things. Before arrival it tends to be a hazy cross between a giant conference centre churning through humungous trade shows and bank HQs in modern glass towers.
There is something to this – there’s surely nowhere else in the world that comes down as far on the business side of the business vs pleasure tourism scale. But it doesn’t take much skimming through to realise that the city isn’t all that coldly commercial at all.
The rather un-German skyscrapers are very much in evidence, and the wealth is on show in the perma-buzzing shops and restaurants, but there’s something surprisingly homely and traditional not far beneath the surface. The city’s character is more sausages than sales – and even if there for work, that warmth soon shines through.
A walk through Frankfurt’s highlights
The Main Tower is no longer the tallest building in Frankfurt, but it’s the best starting point. Head up 54 storeys in the lift to the 200m high observation deck and you can take in the city, the Main river, surrounding forests and hills to the west. What’s striking is how the modern skyscrapers rise out of an otherwise flat landscape.
From there, stroll over the river to the Museumsufer, where 10 museums huddle up in close proximity along the same embankment. None are must-sees, which sums up Frankfurt’s problem in a nutshell, but most are solidly decent and occasionally illuminating. The Stadel is the big art museum, with plenty of old master representation. But perhaps the most interesting is the Deutsches Architekturmuseum. It majors on temporary architecture exhibitions, but has an excellent permanent centrepiece that uses scale models to show how buildings and urban design have changed over thousands of years.
The small, historic heart of Frankfurt, Romerberg, is full with handsome red sandstone buildings that look in a remarkably good state of repair. This is because almost the entire area was rebuilt after the Second World War. That so much was restored so quickly is what makes the area so remarkable – it’s testament to what humanity can do when it puts its mind to things.
Frankfurt’s best park
There are plenty of parks to the northwest of the city centre, but the most impressive is the Palmengarten, which has more than just the palm trees that the name suggests. It’s more a network of gardens, with individual chunks devoted to rhododendrons, roses and tropical plants, while there’s also a waterfall, grotto and boating lake.
Frankfurt tours and experiences
In all honesty, the best thing to do in Frankfurt is take a day trip to the Rhine Valley, including a cruise along the river. However, guided walking tours can help you understand the city better while a pub crawl is less educational, but fun.
Shopping in Frankfurt
The Zeil is the main shopping street, lined with big name high street brands as well as the Galeria Kaufhof department store. It’s complemented by the newer MyZeil mall. Meanwhile, Goethestrasse collects all the megabucks designer labels in one place.
For something with more local character, try Handwerkskunst am Romer, which has lots of cute wooden toys but really excels itself in fabulously detailed cuckoo clocks.
Frankfurt accommodation recommendations
The JW Marriott is part of the shiny, modern MyZeil complex. There are original artworks throughout, a rooftop beehive producing honey to be served up at breakfast and predictably luxurious beds.
The Hilton Frankfurt City Centre (www.hilton.com/frankfurt) has a massive selling point in its 25 metre pool (it was built around an old leisure centre and the pool had to be kept as part of the bargain). But it also has proper king beds (rare in Germany where two singles pushed together are common), and rather impressive if vertigo-inducing glass lifts shooting up through the central court.
Before booking, remember that weekend rates tend to be considerably cheaper than weekday rates.
More Germany city guides
Other Germany city guides on Planet Whitley look at Bonn, Dortmund, Essen and West Berlin. There are also several helpful pieces in the Hamburg section.
