When Steven and I left our home in Denver, going to Frankfurt, Germany was certainly not on our itinerary but, in the age of Covid-19, travel of any sort is a challenge and we realized we just needed to be open to changes that popped up along the way. That turned out to be the case when, three days before we were taking the train to Luxembourg City, the government announced that all travel to their country by Americans, regardless of vaccination status, was canceled. That put us in more than a bit of a pickle as, not only were we hoping to spend four days in a country we'd never seen before, we also had an onward flight with Swissair from Luxembourg City to Zurich. With our not being able to enter Luxembourg, that meant that the money we'd spent for that flight was down the drain as we didn't envision being able to use the credit in the time allotted by the airline.
Steven and I were based in the beautiful Belgian city of Bruges when we realized we needed to figure out where to go instead of Luxembourg for those four days. Almost immediately we decided to add a day to our time in Zurich which meant finding a new property that had a vacancy for three nights as our original reservation didn't. We both still had foul colds then and I was adamant about not wanting to spend all day feeling lousy while traveling on a train to see some city for two days and then another whole day when we left traveling on to Zurich. That excluded Munich which was too far away. Steven was pretty bummed because Munich seemed to 'tick off' so many boxes for us.
It seemed incredible that about 160 million people pass through Frankfurt's main train station every year as that was twice the population of the entire country! Before the station was built in 1888, travelers had to go to one of three stations located around Frankfurt.
Within minutes of our arrival in Frankfurt, we'd seen one Maclaren and several Porsches, and oodles more BMWs - clearly there was money to burn in Frankfurt!
After arriving from what felt like treeless Belgium where we'd just been for almost two weeks, it caught us off guard a bit walking down a wide tree-filled boulevard en route to Willy Brandt Square.
It didn't take us long being in Frankfurt to realize it was a hub for modern sculpture.
Willy Brandt, the person who gave this square its name, was the German chancellor in the late 60s and early 70s. The real reason for visiting, though, was the giant Euro sign. With the skyscrapers towering behind it, the square was a constant reminder that Frankfurt was a city famous for its banks. The skyscraper behind the Euro sign, the Eurotower, was once home to the European Central Bank until it eventually got too small. In 2015, the bank moved to a new location in the east of the city.
The contrast between the uber-rich and the extremely poor was far, far greater than anything we'd come across in our almost two weeks in Belgium and was apparent literally the moment we walked out of the train station. Not only were there many fantastically expensive cars while waiting for an Uber, several immigrant women also came up to us with babes on their backs begging and there were several drunks on the train station steps. Not to say, obviously, there weren't beggars and drunks in Belgium but we just didn't come across any that we recalled.
No ho-hum, boring tables and chairs here!
Though not comparable to cities like New York or San Francisco, Frankfurt is the only German city with a skyline dominated by high-rise buildings and the citizens were justifiably proud of its many skyscrapers. On our way to the Main Tower, we came across many of them. Most were closed to the public except for the Main Tower which had an observation deck at its top.
We didn't think we had ever noticed or seen a rectangular-shaped building attached to a circular-shaped one - how novel was that?! It would have been neat to view the city from its observation deck.
Steven and I thought we'd only ever come across this vast network of above-ground gas or steam pipes in Iceland before and only then in the countryside not in Reykjavik, its capital. We noticed them in several places throughout our time in Frankfurt.
The statue in the park honored German classical playwright and philosopher, Friedrich Schiller.
Walking through the delightful green space of Taunusanlage was so refreshing after Belgium as there was precious little in the way of parks we saw in the four cities we spent time in.
I know Steven wasn't as enamored with Frankfurt as I was but I really liked the huge gleaming skyscrapers jutting up behind the trees - again, all that was a huge contrast from what we'd just experienced in charming and generally cute-as-a-button Belgium.
I don't know that we took the most direct route to the Alte Oper or Old Opera but it could hardly have been prettier. While most opera performances now take place in the municipal theater, this building was once Frankfurt’s main opera building. During WW II, it was destroyed by bombs and the city didn’t rebuild it until the '70s and it was only reopened in 1981. Today, there are mostly concerts with some musicals and other performances at the old opera house.
Yvonne: It was so fun sending messages back and forth in real time via WhatsApp as Steven and I were walking around a city you used to call home for a few years! I hadn't known before that you used to live near the opera and your older daughter was also born nearby.
Photos of the opera from the adjacent plaza:
Steven routed us through Bockenheimer Park en route to one of Frankfurt's very, very rare old attractions.
As large parts of Frankfurt’s city center got destroyed during WW II, it was rare to find any historic buildings that have remained in an original state. Eschenheimer Turm was one of them. The tower was once part of the city fortifications and dates back to the early 15th-century. During the bombings, it somehow survived as a reminder of the former city limits. The Eschenheimer tower was not even part of the original city wall. Back in the Middle Ages, when Frankfurt was still a small town, the walls only surrounded a tiny area and more and more people had to live outside the wall.
I hope you like this photo of the tower as I had to stand in just the perfect spot not to get any of the modern Frankfurt in the shot. It wasn't easy as the tower was in the middle of a very busy intersection with cars and buses rushing by!
The old-world charm of the arch attracted me so I suggested to Steven we peek inside. There was a restaurant and various businesses, including the Kobberger Parfumerie, in the courtyard.
Another artsy photo with the juxtaposition of the old and the new caught my eye. I was so glad my curiosity got the better of me as it led us to MyZeil, a very fancy shopping center. Even though we weren’t planning on buying anything, we wanted to take a look at the architecture.
Right in the middle of the building, was what almost looked like a glass funnel! As the structure collected rainwater that could be used in the building it really did work like a funnel. When MyZeil opened in 2009, it was so immensely popular with the locals, more than a half-million people visited just in the first two weeks. Unlike those in Denver, there was nary an empty storefront in the entire mall that was about four stories high, too.
NEVER had we seen such a mammoth display dedicated to a toothbrush maker!
I sure hadn’t realized that until 1866, Frankfurt was an independent city-state. That meant that it had its own government, coins and, of course, army. The Hauptwache served as the headquarters for the army, with a prison in the basement. After Prussia annexed Frankfurt in 1866, the city no longer had any need for an army. It continued using the Hauptwache as a police station for a few years before turning it into a cafe in 1905. And even though it, too, was destroyed during the war, the city quickly reconstructed it. Hauptwache remains a cafe today, with the square next to it being one of the most popular meeting places in Frankfurt.
Goethe Platz or square honored Germany's greatest literary figure of the 'modern era,' Johan Wolfgang von Goethe, 1749-1832.
We returned to Hauptwache as the bells at its attractive Sankt Katharinen Church were pealing nonstop for over fifteen minutes and they had piqued our interest.
Another of the probably 20-30 Porsches we saw in just one day in Frankfurt - I don't know that we've seen 5 in 40 years in Denver!
The Kleinmarkthalle was a covered marketplace with 156 stalls selling Frankfurt’s typical fare and foods from all around the world. What a feast for the eyes, nose, and smell!
Definitely not a photo trick here - these mushrooms were the biggest we've ever seen!
Rindsbratwurst was a beef sausage very popular in the area.
Steven had to show his Covid-19 card before being allowed to sit down and eat his currywurst meal. That subsequently proved to be the norm in most places in Switzerland, too, as it had been back home in New York by the way.
I'd loved to have known what Frankfurters, i.e. residents of Frankfurt, would have made of this graffiti.
En route to our next stop, we saw this attractive building but couldn't figure out what it was. Possibly an arts high school based on what may have been high schoolers coming out en masse?
Directly across from the building above, was Ehemaliges Polizeigefängnis Klapperfeld. Quite a mouthful to non-German speakers, it translated to “former police prison Klapperfeld.” The police built this prison in 1886, the same year that they demolished Konstablerwache. During the National Socialist period, the Gestapo used this prison for incarceration and torture. Many of those who were imprisoned later ended up in concentration camps. If we’d been there on a Saturday from 3-6, we could have taken a tour and learned more about the building and its disturbing history.
It seemed only fitting that the Old Jewish Cemetery would be our next stop on our walking tour. It wasn't until we looked closely that we realized each block on the wall that stretched for as far as the eye could see represented one known Jewish person from Frankfurt that was a victim of the Nazi annihilation policy. The 11,908 names were another sobering reminder of man's inhumanity to man.
Visitors to the memorial site had placed small stones on the wall in keeping with the Jewish mourning ritual.
The Old Jewish Cemetery is the second oldest Jewish cemetery in Germany, with the oldest tombstone dating back to 1272. We didn’t understand why a staff member at the Jewish Museum next to the graveyard wouldn’t give out a key to the cemetery that day. The Jewish population of Frankfurt used to live in a street called Judengasse, remains of which were apparently in the museum.
The map of Frankfurt looked very different decades ago with Judengasse being a curved, narrow street running through an area where there were now fine houses. The people living in the Judengasse used the Old Jewish Cemetery until the 1800s. By that time, Frankfurt built a new main cemetery for both Christians and Jews. The Old Jewish Cemetery remained for many years, though, until Hitler rose to power and the government started making plans for demolishing it. That began in 1943. Out of the original 6,500 tombstones, only 2,500 remain today.
To take these photos, I had to put my camera phone in between the cemetery bars and hope it wouldn't fall.
The wall of stones and memories of almost 12,000 men, women, and children never seemed to end.
Click on the photo that was on the side of the museum to read of the Nazis' horror that took place in 1938.
At last, we reached the entrance to the cemetery but it sadly remained locked to us still.
On the square behind the cemetery was a large stone cube surrounded by a grove of plane trees. The cube was made up of remains of the foundations of the former ghetto. The ground was covered in gray gravel. The area was called Börneplatz Memorial Site in memory of the synagogue that had been desecrated by Nazi thugs in 1938.
I don't know how to segue from a memorial remembering Frankfurt's Jews to a possible Michael Jackson silhouette, so here it is.
When Germany was united in the 19th century, the Imperial Cathedral of Saint Bartholomew, also simply known as the Frankfurt Cathedral, took on special meaning because of its historical importance in the days of the Holy Roman Empire. The cathedral was begun in the 1300s and 1400s in the Gothic style, and has been faithfully rebuilt twice: once after a fire in 1867 and then in the 1950s after the war.
This former collegiate church was awarded the title of 'cathedral' in 1562 when it started hosting the coronation ceremonies for the Holy Roman kings. Even before ten kings were crowned here from 1562 to 1792, imperial elections were held in the church from 1356.
The elegant altar shrine of the Holy Trinity in the Neo-Gothic porch entry was all that remained of the original 18th-century Baroque interior.
As we entered the church by the belfry, we saw the monumental Crucifixion of Christ that was created in 1509. It sent the message of the Christian faith and of hope in the Resurrection.
One of the chapels had an evocative Pieta from the 19th century.
The statue of St. John the Baptist holding up the Baptismal Font reminded Christians of Christ's baptism.
Gothic altar shrines adorned each side of the church near the altar.
At the church's crossing or Intercession was where emperors were proclaimed during the Middle Ages after their election. After 1562, they were then consecrated and crowned in this spot. The altar or center of worship was designed in 1993.
St. Mary's Chapel had a beautifully stone-carved representation of the death of the Virgin from 1434.
I had never seen anything like these before in a church and had no idea what they were.
Church representatives used to gather in the Choir Stalls to pray for the king, city, and parish. Paintings above the stalls were of the church's patron saints, St. Bartholomew and Charlemagne.
The Adoration Chapel was one of the simplest I'd seen and, therefore, quite lovely.
Like many German cities during WW II, Frankfurt was a target of the Allied strategic bombing campaign. The British Royal Air Force carried out two of the war's most destructive air raids in March of 1944. Of the city's more than 2,000 half-timbered buildings, only one remained intact, with the other going up in flames leaving just masonry skeletons. The Cathedral was also badly damaged.
Even though the cathedral was of great historical importance to the German people its primary role remained as a house of worship to God.
Just steps away from the church was New Old Town, ‘new’ because restoration here started so late that there was still scaffolding in this area in 2018. Even though not all houses were in their original state we still could get a pretty good impression of how Frankfurt once looked. The most noticeable building in this area was the Haus zur goldenen Waage or the House of the Golden Scale. I read that the facade was easily one of the most beautiful ones that could be found in Frankfurt.
It was fun to ooh and aah in some of the shops and the architecture!
Almost immediately we reached Römerberg, Frankfurt’s central square in the heart of the Old Town. It was definitely the best place to admire half-timbered houses while eating ice cream. Much like the rest of the city center, this area almost completely burned down in the war.
It wasn’t until the 1980s that the city decided to restore the half-timbered houses, using old plans and photographs. They did a pretty good job, didn’t they?! Taking a look at the buildings, it was hard to believe that these weren’t original.
We spent a good chunk of time just taking in the charming sights as, quite frankly, we didn't expect anything as pretty as this in Frankfurt and it was so easy on the eyes with things going on all around us.
I had to look not once or twice but three times to finally realize these 'dogs' were just incredibly fine likenesses of them.
Paulskirche was Frankfurt’s second important church which represented a very different time period from the cathedral where the coronation ceremonies of emperors took place. The first publicly elected parliament of Germany came together in this building in 1848, making this building an important symbol of democracy for Germany. If we’d been able to visit the interior of Paulskirche, we’d have seen a very different interior from the original one as the church also suffered massive damage during the bombings.
As you can imagine, we were both pretty surprised seeing a plaque honoring President John F. Kennedy on the side of the church as the only connection I knew of him with Germany was his unintentionally humorous speech in Berlin.
I don't know who or what the monument beside the church honored. Yvonne - do you know?
From the city's archaeological past:
One of the best places to see Frankfurt's skyline would have been from a pedestrian bridge called Eiserner Steg, famous for its many love locks and also for its incredible views. The iron footbridge spanned the River Main between the center of the city and the Sachsenhausen area. The bridge has had an eventful 150 years since it was completed in 1869. Rebuilt twice, the first time in 1912 when the Main was made navigable to larger boats, the second time was after the Nazis blew it up in the waning days of the Second World War.
If we’d stayed in Frankfurt another day, we would have returned to walk across the bridge to see the skyscrapers of the banking district rising, or take a ride on one of the tour boats that leave from just next to the bridge to experience Frankfurt from a very different angle.
Grouped together on both sides of the river was a cluster of a dozen museums in an area known as the Museumsufer or Museum Embankment. Some museums moved into patrician houses while others had eye-catching venues built for them by eminent architects. Some of them would also have piqued our interest if we'd remained in Frankfurt longer.
I was quite taken with Frankfurt's exciting skyscrapers and modern architecture, its many downtown parks and sculptures, its historical churches, exciting revitalized squares that had oodles of charm, and the prospect of so much more to discover for those with more time than we had.
Next post: Onto Heidelberg in Germany's Black Forest region for just a day.
Posted on October 16th, 2021, from Vernazza in Italy's Cinque Terre. We came hoping to hike to each of the five towns over our three days here but discovered that hiking will be limited because recent rainfall has caused landslides which have shut down trails. Judging from the mobs of people here on a glorious October Saturday, I don't know how many people knew or cared!
No comments:
Post a Comment