Experience
Germany

BUCKET LIST TRAVEL : FRANKFURT

The city of skyscrapers and Goethe

It’s nicknamed ‘Mainhattan’ thanks to its incredible skyline and the Main river. Germany’s economic capital combines modernity and tradition. Frankfurt is full of culture, a suitable home for the city of the country’s most famous writer, the Romantic Goethe.

AN EXCEPTIONAL OPERA AT OPER FRANKFURT

One of the most important opera houses in Europe and among the most famous in the world is Oper Frankfurt. Many of the world’s best opera performances are hosted here regularly. Orlando, Madame Butterfly, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Eugene Onegin and The Magic Flute are some of the classics to have graced the programme.

With its Bauhaus feel, the building might seem a little austere compared with the beauty of Frankfurt’s former opera house, a Neo-Renaissance-style building dating back to 1880. Nevertheless, it’s a key location for music. Opernwelt magazine has named Oper Frankfurt Opera House of the Year several times.

Why not choose something famously German, like Hansel and Gretel? Engelbert Humperdinck’s three-act opera is inspired by the fairy tale from the Brothers Grimm. The music was composed in Frankfurt in 1891 and performed in the language of Goethe (with German and English subtitles). It’s a work loved by all ages, joyfully swaying between childish music and more dramatic moments, with a Wagnerian orchestration as Humperdinck was a disciple of the German grandmaster.

Must-sees in Frankfurt

THE STÄDEL MUSEUM

The Städel Museum, dating back to 1815, is one of Germany’s oldest and most significant. It’s home to 3,000 paintings, 600 sculptures, 5,000 photographs and 100,000 drawings depicting seven centuries of history. Its masterpieces include Botticelli’s Portrait of Simonetta Vespucci and Rembrandt’s The Blinding of Samson.

SCHIRN KUNSTHALLE

The Schirn Kunsthalle is between the cathedral and the city hall (Römer) in the heart of Frankfurt. It’s the main exhibition space for modern and contemporary art. Wassily Kandinsky, Frida Kahlo, Alberto Giacometti, Marc Chagall and Yves Klein have all been the focus of retrospectives there in recent years.

GOETHE HOUSE

It’s within these walls that the famous German poet was born in 1749 and grew up. He also wrote Götz von Berlichingen and his most well-known work, The Sorrows of Young Werther. You can visit the rooms where the poet and his family lived and have an intimate look inside an 18^th-century bourgeois home.

ZOO FRANKFURT

This zoo was built in 1858, one of the oldest in Europe and the second biggest in Germany. Spread over more than 11 hectares, it’s home to 4,500 animals from five hundred species, including some facing extinction, like the okapi, a mammal with striped legs originating from Congo.

MAIN TOWER

Main Tower is a 56-storey glass skyscraper, 240 metres high, when you include the antenna. This building, opened in 1999, has an observation platform with 360-degree views and spectacular panoramas of the city and the surrounding countryside.