Frankfurt has been choosing German kings since the Middle Ages — and for nearly four hundred years, emperors were crowned in its cathedral. But the skyline tells a different story: when Germany rebuilt after the war, Frankfurt decided it would rather be a financial capital than a political one, and threw up the towers that earned it the nickname “Mainhattan.” That choice stuck. Today the European Central Bank sets interest rates for the whole eurozone from here, making this one of the few price decisions a neighbourhood in Frankfurt can feel all the way to Lisbon.
Audio guide Frankfurt
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.
About Frankfurt
Places worth a story
Goethe University Frankfurt
university in Frankfurt, Germany
The first thing to know about Goethe University is that it’s named after a dropout in all but name—Frankfurt’s most famous son, who never actually studied here. The university opened in 1914 as a citizens’ project, funded by wealthy Frankfurt families rather than a king or a state. That unusual birth made it Germany’s first university founded by the public, not by a prince. Today it’s one of the largest universities in the country, known especially for economics, law, and the natural sciences. Its Westend campus wraps around the old IG Farben building—an imposing 1930s complex built as the headquarters of what became the Nazi-era chemical giant. After the war, the U.S. Army ran its European command from those same halls.
Photo: Schlempp · CC BY-SA 3.0 de
Frankfurt (Main) Hbf
main railway station in Frankfurt, Germany
St. Paul's Church, Frankfurt am Main
church in Frankfurt/Main, Germany
Frankfurt Cathedral
Gothic church located in the centre of Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Photo: Mylius · GFDL 1.2
Main Tower
skyscraper in Frankfurt, Germany
From the top of Main Tower, Frankfurt's skyline puts on the whole show — the Main river, the banking quarter, half a dozen lesser towers that from here look almost modest. The viewing platform is unique among the city's skyscrapers: no other one lets the public up. Its shape does the rest — a square seventies block lashed to a round blue glass cylinder, as if two different decades got built in the same afternoon. Inside, Bill Viola's *The World of Appearances* flickers slowly in the foyer, a video ocean that people stand in front of for surprisingly long. The tower is 200 metres, or 240 if you count the antenna, and it is still the fourth-tallest thing in Germany.
Seat of the European Central Bank
headquarters of the ECB in Frankfurt, Germany
Alte Oper
concert hall and former opera house in Frankfurt am Main, Germany
When Carl Orff's Carmina Burana was first performed anywhere in 1937, it happened at the Alte Oper. The building had opened in 1880 as Frankfurt's grand opera house, hosting premieres like Schreker's Der ferne Klang. Allied bombs destroyed it in 1944, leaving the ruin standing for decades while the Oper Frankfurt moved elsewhere. Rebuilt in the 1970s and opened in 1981, the Alte Oper now works as a concert hall with a large hall and smaller venues inside.
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.
Photo: Mylius · GFDL 1.2
IG Farben Building
building of the Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany
It opened in 1931 as the headquarters of IG Farben, then the world’s largest chemical company and the largest corporation in Europe. The building was so vast that employees reportedly used bicycles to get from one end to the other. After the war, it became the main headquarters for the American forces in Europe, and General Eisenhower himself worked here. Dwight D. Eisenhower is closely tied to the building's later history: it was in this complex that he signed the proclamation establishing the state of Hesse. Today it belongs to Goethe University, where its paternoster lifts — open compartments that move in a continuous loop — still carry students between floors.
Photo: Sith Cookie · CC BY-SA 3.0
St. Catherine's Church
First new Protestant church in Frankfurt after the Reformation
Photo: DXR · CC BY-SA 4.0
Frankfurt Zoological Garden
zoo in Frankfurt, Germany
Stories are written by an AI from public map and encyclopaedia data and may contain mistakes.