When the Holy Roman Emperors were elected here for nearly four centuries, Frankfurt became the stage for the most powerful ritual in medieval Europe. From 1356 onward, the Golden Bull fixed the election in the collegiate church of St. Bartholomew, and from 1562 the coronation followed in the same place. The city’s Römerberg filled with oxen roasted whole and fountains running with wine for the common crowd, while the new emperor dined with the electors in the Kaisersaal. That political weight is why Frankfurt, not Berlin or Munich, grew into Germany’s financial centre — the stock exchange opened here in 1585 to set uniform exchange rates for the trade fairs. Goethe was born a few streets from the Römer, and his family home still stands. The city’s modern skyline is a direct inheritance of those fairs and banks.
Frankfurt audio guide
Tella is a free audio guide for any place on Earth. Here are 30 places in Frankfurt worth a story. Open one on the map and hear it read aloud in English, or take the Android app on a walk and let it narrate whatever you pass.
.jpg)
About Frankfurt
Places worth a story
Goethe University Frankfurt
university in Frankfurt, Germany
Max Born taught here, Otto Hahn taught here, and the university’s own graduates have pulled in nineteen Nobel Prizes. Goethe University Frankfurt opened in 1914 as one of the first universities in Germany founded not by a prince or a church, but by its own citizens, with money raised from wealthy Frankfurt families. That gave it an unusual independence from the start, and it became known for sociology and critical theory here in Westend — the Frankfurt School started in its halls in the 1920s. Today it’s one of Germany’s largest universities, and its Westend campus sits around the old IG Farben building, seized after the war for the university’s use.
Waldstadion
stadium in Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Commerzbank Tower
skyscraper in Frankfurt, Germany
Messeturm
skyscraper in Frankfurt, Germany
Frankfurt (Main) Hbf
main railway station in Frankfurt, Germany
Listen on the map → Photo: Thomas Wolf , www.foto-tw.de · CC BY-SA 3.0 de
Städel Museum
art museum in Frankfurt, Germany
St. Paul's Church, Frankfurt am Main
church in Frankfurt/Main, Germany
Listen on the map → Photo: Photo: Andreas Praefcke · CC BY 3.0
Frankfurt Cathedral
Gothic church located in the centre of Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Main Tower
skyscraper in Frankfurt, Germany
Listen on the map → Photo: Thomas Wolf , www.foto-tw.de · CC BY-SA 3.0 de
Tower 185
skyscraper in Frankfurt, Germany
Listen on the map → Photo: Thomas Wolf ( Der Wolf im Wald ) · CC BY-SA 3.0
Westendstrasse 1
skyscraper in Frankfurt, Germany
Senckenberg Museum
museum of natural history in Frankfurt
Seat of the European Central Bank
headquarters of the ECB in Frankfurt, Germany
Listen on the map → Photo: Kiefer. from Frankfurt, Germany · CC BY-SA 2.0
Römer
building in Frankfurt
Listen on the map → Photo: Thomas Wolf , www.foto-tw.de · CC BY-SA 3.0 de
Europaturm
television tower in Frankfurt, Germany
The Europaturm is Frankfurt's own Empire State Building, quite literally — it was originally called the Ginnheimer Spargel, the "Ginnheim Asparagus," for its absurdly slender neck and bulging top. At 337 meters, it's Germany's tallest structure, though that height has been a moving target. When it opened in 1979, the tower stood 331 meters. A decade later, a new antenna pushed it to 337.5 — only for the top section to be swapped out in 2004, shortening it back to 337 even. What hasn't changed is its job: it relays television and radio signals to millions of households across the Rhine-Main region. The Swissotel inside the tower top is long gone, but the local joke remains — that asparagus is the one vegetable Frankfurt will never let be cut down.
Alte Oper
concert hall and former opera house in Frankfurt am Main, Germany
The Alte Oper only got its name because it was once Frankfurt's opera house — until the city built a bigger one in 1951 and left this one to slowly fall apart. By the 1970s it was a burned-out shell, and the plan was to tear it down. A citizens' campaign stopped that, and in 1981 it reopened as a concert hall. The joke at the time was that Frankfurt was the only city that had to build a new opera house so it could afford to save the old one. Inside now are two halls — the Great Hall holds over two thousand people, the Mozart Hall a few hundred. The facade is the original from 1880, with statues of Mozart and Goethe still standing on the roof.
Listen on the map → Photo: Thomas Wolf , www.foto-tw.de · CC BY-SA 3.0 de
Silberturm
"Silver Tower", skyscraper in Frankfurt, Germany
IG Farben Building
building of the Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany
The IG Farben Building was once the largest office building in Europe, and its first occupant was one of the most notorious corporations in history. IG Farben manufactured the poison gas used in Nazi concentration camps. After the war, the building became the headquarters of the American military in Germany and housed the CIA’s European operations. The name was quietly sanded off the façade. Today it is the centrepiece of Goethe University’s Westend campus, with students studying in offices once occupied by American generals. In 2001, the university renamed it the Eisenhower Building in honour of the American president who received Germany’s surrender.
Goethe House
Goethe family residence in Frankfurt am Main
Frankfurt Zoological Garden
zoo in Frankfurt, Germany
Listen on the map → Photo: me -- Peng 30 June 2005 13:03 (UTC) · CC BY-SA 3.0
OpernTurm
skyscraper in Frankfurt, Germany
Listen on the map → Photo: Thomas Wolf ( Der Wolf im Wald ) · CC BY 3.0
Museum für Moderne Kunst
art museum in Frankfurt, Germany
St. Catherine's Church
First new Protestant church in Frankfurt after the Reformation
_(cropped).jpg)
Stories are written by an AI from public map and encyclopaedia data and may contain mistakes.