Benable — create shareable lists of things you recommend!
E.g., products you love, local businesses, travel recs - you can add anything to a Benable list!
Unconventional Travel Guide: Frankfurt, Germany
27
items This guide is organised into layers of perspectives on Frankfurt am Main, the city in which I have lived since 2017. The lists are therefore based on my personal experience and ongoing observations, rather than aiming for completeness.
Sections
6
Classic Highlights
Everyday Life
History & Memory
Architecture & Landmark
Queer Scene
Honorable Mentions
Classic Highlights
Well-known places that define Frankfurt for many visitors
The Römer is Frankfurt’s historic city hall, located in the heart of the old town. Its stepped gabled façade has become one of the city’s most recognizable symbols, representing both its medieval past and reconstructed identity after World War II.
Römer (City Hall)
Römerberg is the historic central square of Frankfurt, where reconstructed timber-framed buildings and open space create a setting that feels both traditional and curated. It functions as a symbolic center of the city, shaped by tourism, events, and ...
Römerberg
The New Old Town Frankfurt is a recently rebuilt area that recreates the appearance of Frankfurt’s prewar old town, blending historical references with modern construction to produce a carefully curated version of the past.
New Old Town
Frankfurt’s skyline—often nicknamed Mainhattan—forms a dense cluster of high-rise buildings that define the city’s global financial identity, best viewed from the Deutschherrnbrücke near the European Central Bank.
Frankfurt Skyline
The Goethe House is the reconstructed birthplace of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, presenting an idealized interior of 18th-century life that reflects both literary heritage and the selective reconstruction of cultural memory in Frankfurt.
Goethe House
Städel Museum is one of Germany’s major art institutions, combining classical collections with modern exhibition spaces.
Städel Museum
Alt-Sachsenhausen is a compact area of narrow streets and traditional apple wine taverns, often seen as a cultural shorthand for “traditional” Frankfurt, where local drinking culture is both preserved and performed through a lively, nightlife-driven ...
Alt-Sachsenhausen (Apple Wine Culture)
The Frankfurt Stock Exchange is a neoclassical building that represents Frankfurt’s role as a financial center, where the iconic bull and bear sculptures outside translate abstract market dynamics into visible urban symbols.
Frankfurt Stock Exchange
The Euro Sculpture is a large blue installation that visualizes the euro as a symbol, translating an abstract economic system into a simplified and highly recognizable urban object within Frankfurt’s financial landscape.
Euro Sculpture
Everyday Life
Spaces where daily life unfolds, from routine spots to areas that show different sides of the city’s urban reality.
Bahnhofsviertel is a dense inner-city district around the main station where nightlife, migration, commerce, and social challenges intersect, including a visible red-light area, creating a highly layered urban environment that contrasts sharply with ...
Bahnhofsviertel
Grüneburgpark is one of Frankfurt’s largest green spaces, offering open lawns, tree-lined paths, and a calmer atmosphere near the city center. It functions as an everyday retreat, shaped more by local routines—walking, studying, relaxing—than by tour...
Grüneburgpark
The Kleinmarkthalle is a dense indoor market where local routines and culinary diversity intersect, functioning less as a tourist attraction and more as an everyday gathering space shaped by quick meals, repeated visits, and informal social interacti...
Kleinmarkthalle
MyZeil is a shopping mall defined by its dramatic glass façade, where a vortex-like opening cuts through the structure, turning a commercial space into a visually striking architectural statement within Frankfurt’s retail district.
MyZeil
Berger Straße is a long commercial street lined with cafés, small shops, and everyday services, where local routines unfold in a continuous urban rhythm that contrasts with the more formal and financial image of central Frankfurt.
Berger Straße
History & Memory
Sites connected to Frankfurt’s past, including places that carry historical significance and more complex layers of memory.
St. Paul's Church is a circular building that once hosted the first German national assembly in 1848, and now functions as a symbolic site of democracy, where historical significance outweighs its religious origin and shapes its role in the city’s co...
St Paul's Church
The IG Farben Building is a monumental structure whose imposing form contrasts with its historical associations, most notably its role as the former headquarters of IG Farben during the Nazi era, embedding the site within a layered narrative of indus...
IG Farben Building
The Adorno Monument, located on the campus of Goethe University Frankfurt, presents a stylized reconstruction of Theodor W. Adorno’s workspace, turning intellectual production into a visible object and embedding critical theory within the everyday en...
Theodor Adorno Monument
The Wollheim Memorial, located near the IG Farben Building, commemorates the forced laborers exploited by IG Farben during the Nazi era, introducing a deliberate and critical counterpoint to the surrounding architecture by making a difficult history ...
Wollheim Memorial
The grave of Arthur Schopenhauer, located in the Frankfurt Hauptfriedhof, is modest and easily overlooked, yet it anchors the city within a broader intellectual history that is not immediately visible in its contemporary urban landscape.
The grave of Arthur Schopenhauer
A hidden gem for history lovers, near the central station.
The Former Residence of Oskar Schindler
Architecture & Landmark
Buildings and spaces that shape Frankfurt’s physical identity
The Gutenberg Monument Frankfurt is a 19th-century statue set within a busy urban square, where its classical form is often framed against Frankfurt’s modern high-rises, creating a visual juxtaposition between historical representation and contempora...
Statue of Johannes Gutenberg
The Alte Oper is a reconstructed concert hall whose ornate historic façade stands out within the modern cityscape, functioning as a visual anchor that contrasts with Frankfurt’s surrounding high-rise architecture.
Alte Oper
The European Central Bank is a modern high-rise complex whose angular twin-tower design contrasts with the incorporated historic Großmarkthalle, creating a layered architectural composition that reflects both continuity and transformation at the east...
European Central Bank
The architecture of this subway station is very cute.
Bockenheimer Warte Subway Station Entrance
Queer Scene
Places and areas that reflect Frankfurt’s queerness
A gay sauna in Frankfurt.
Saunawerk
Honorable Mentions
A small selection of details and places that do not fully fit into the main categories, but add additional layers to how the city can be experienced or understood.
The Paternoster lift in the IG Farben Building is a continuously moving elevator system without doors, where passengers step on and off in motion, preserving an older form of office infrastructure that has largely disappeared from contemporary buildi...
Paternoster Elevators in IG Farben Building
The Struwwelpeter Museum is a small museum dedicated to the 19th-century children’s book Struwwelpeter, presenting a distinctly moralistic and often unsettling form of storytelling.
Struwwelpeter Museum