Museums: Frankfurt, Germany
Museums
Several of Frankfurt’s museums are clustered on the south bank of the Main River, locally known as the Museumsufer. The most visited is the Städel Museum, thus it’s listed first in this section. Many museums are closed Mondays; and note that both Jewish museums along with the Film and History museums are free on the last Saturday of each month. The Money Museum is always free. For a comprehensive look at all of Frankfurt’s cultural institutions, go to www.kultur.frankfurt.de or ask TI for the informative (and free) “museums and exhibition sites” booklet. Note: For Goethe’s birth house and museum, click here.
Culture vultures purchase the 2-day Museumsufer Ticket (adult 15€, student 8€, family 23€), valid for free entry into all of the city’s noteworthy museums (including Goethe’s birth house); available at participating museums or TI. Note: Ticket is valid for two consecutive days, not 48 hours; thus buy it early on the first day to maximize its worth.
Städel Museum, (partially closed for renovation until spring 2012, Tue-Sun 10:00-18:00, Wed/Thur till 21:00, adult 7€, student/senior 65+ 5€, family 15€, 50% discount with Frankfurt Card or free with Museumsufer Ticket, audio guide 4€/3€, www.staedelmuseum.de). Visitors spend hours here at Städel absorbing its wide-ranging collection of European art that contains some 2,700 paintings and 600 sculptures spanning 700 years, from the 14th century to the present, including works from Dürer, Rembrandt, Botticelli, Monet, Renoir, van Gogh, Cézanne and Picasso. Note: Your entry ticket is valid all day if you’d like to leave and return later, just notify staff. Also note that weekends incur a 2€ surcharge to the price of admission. GPS: N50 06.201 E8 40.373. To get there, Städel is located at Schaumainkai 63, Museumsufer, a 20-min walk from either the main train station or Römerberg (market square). By bus, from the main train station (exit out the front and go right to the bus departure area) and ride #46 to Städel; (bus departs every 20 min, 5-min ride).
Liebieghaus, the museum of ancient sculpture, (Tue-Sun 10:00-18:00, Wed/Thur till 21:00, adult 9€, student 7€, family 16€, with Frankfurt Card 3.50€ or free with Museumsufer Ticket, audio guide 4€/3€ or some English text description throughout, www.liebieghaus.de). Housed in a three-story, 19th-century villa bound by a blissful nature reserve, this exclusive sculpture museum recently underwent a 2.5€ million facelift. Exhibited works date from ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome through the Middle Ages to neoclassicism. Highlights include Egyptian wood sarcophagi from the 13th-century B.C., a rose-granite statue of Alexander the Great from 300 B.C., and a marble bust of Emperor Augustus dated 27 A.D. Note: There is no elevator thus visitors must climb a number of steps to view the whole museum. Left of the museum’s entrance is a cozy café with outdoor patio. To get there, Liebieghaus is located at Schaumainkai 71, Museumsufer, a short distance from the above Städel museum and a 20-min walk from either the main train station or Römerberg (market square). By bus, pick up #46 from the main train station and get off at Städel, then walk back; (bus departs every 20 min, 5-min ride).
Film Museum, (closed for major renovations until mid-August 2011).
Note: The updated 2011 guide is no longer available for download (The updated 2012 guide will soon be released in February)
Buy the colorful pdf file download of this Frankfurt guide (including Frankfurt International Airport and the do-it-yourself Anne Frank Reflective Walk) for a nominal US$2.95 (pdf file format, 4 mb, 22 pages, 2 maps).
PayPal
Purchase: Upon purchase, a link to the guide together with its password will be sent to your email Inbox. To purchase the guide, click the Add To Cart button that will direct you to the PayPal site (credit cards okay).
Go to the Harriman Travel Books Store for more do-it-yourself destination guides.
(See Comments at the bottom of the page and feel free to add one of your own!)
The History Museum, locally Historisches Museum (this museum is now completely closed for renovations until early 2012; Tue-Sun 10:00-18:00, Wed till 21:00, adult 4€, student 2€, 50% discount with Frankfurt Card, free entry on last Saturday of month, and always free with Museumsufer Ticket, www.historisches-museum.frankfurt.de), will be undergoing major renovations until 2014. Thus viewing of the permanent exhibition recounting Frankfurt’s history (from the late Middle Ages to a modern city of high finance) will be hindered with some sections totally closed. To get there, the History Museum is located on the lower side of Römerberg, near river, (ride U4 or U5 to Dom/Römer, exit Römerberg and at top of escalator go right then roll left downhill to square then toward river).
The Schirn Kunsthalle, (Tue-Sun 10:00-19:00, Wed/Thur till 22:00, price varies depending on exhibition but on average adult 8€, student 6€, 50% discount with Frankfurt Card or free with Museumsufer Ticket, www.schirn-kunsthalle.de), is one of Europe’s renowned art institutions for its broad range of rotating exhibitions, for example from Art Nouveau to the visual art of the Stalin era, and Surrealism to the new Romanticism in present-day art. Stop by and see if the latest exhibition is for you? To get there is easy because the Schirn runs into the market square; ride either the U4 or U5 to Dom/Römer (exit Römerberg and at top of escalator is the Kunsthalle).
Money Museum, locally Geldmuseum, (Sun thru Fri 10:00-17:00, Wed till 21:00, closed Sat, free entry!, www.geldmuseum.de). With an interactive touch, this neat exposition helps to explain the history of money, including Europe’s new currency, the €uro, and the mastery of counterfeiting. Check out the bricks of shredded cash for sale in the gift shop—typically you can buy 500,000€ for 10€. Note: Store your bag and/or personal belongings in a locker downstairs; requires a 1€ coin (you get it back upon reopening locker). Toilets are also downstairs. To get there, the museum is located at the German Federal Bank (Deutschen Bundesbank) in Frankfurt’s northern suburbs. Drivers, Wilhelm-Epstein-Strasse 14, parking available out front.By subway, ride either the U1, U2 or U3 to Dornbusch (5th stop from Hauptwache) then walk Am Dornbusch west toward the space needle and cross into Wilhelm-Epstein-Strasse. The museum will soon appear on the left.
The Jewish and Judengasse museums, both under the same management, are situated on either ends of the Old Town, each offering something different, (same hours for both museums: Tue-Sun 10:00-17:00, Wed till 20:00, www.juedischesmuseum.de). Jewish Museum adult 4€, student 2€; Museum Judengasse adult 2€, student 1€; combo-ticket for both museums adult 5€, student 2.50€, 50% discount with Frankfurt Card on adult admission, free entry into either museum on last Saturday of month, and always free with the Museumsufer Ticket.
Richly housed in a block-long palace once owned by the famed international banking barons the Rothschilds, the Jewish Museum (located on north bank of Main River at Untermainkai 14, a 15-min stroll from the main train station or ride U1-U5 to Willy-Brandt-Platz then short walk) recounts Jewish culture and history in Frankfurt from the 12th century. Although interesting, the permanent exhibition upstairs has little English. On ground level is the cashier, a café, and a temporary exhibition that changes every few months.
The smaller Museum Judengasse is located on the former medieval site of the Jewish ghetto, “Judengasse,” literally Jews’ Lane, on the present-day corner of Kurt-Schumacher-Strasse and Battonnstrasse (a few-min walk east of the cathedral), where Frankfurt’s Jewish population was forced to live for 400 years.
In the mid-1800s, Judengasse was razed and the Jews were free to move about the city. Of the original 195 houses at Judengasse, 19 foundations were unearthed and five of these can be viewed here in an exhibition recounting the daily life, living conditions and religious customs of the former inhabitants. Interestingly, like most Jews living in Judengasse, the Rothschilds took their name from their house. Pictorial representations of objects and things were painted on the facades of dwellings; for example, a red shield was the symbol illustrated outside one residence in the 16th century and known as the House of the Red Shield (zum Roten Schild). Thus its residents were called the Rothschilds. Two centuries later, Mayer Amschel Rothschild (a.k.a. the Founder, 1744-1812) was born, beginning a dynastic worldwide banking legacy right here on the back streets of Frankfurt’s ghetto, Judengasse. Unsurprisingly, it is the history of this Jewry that helped forge the city into a multicultural society and the finance capital of Europe in the 21st century. Switching gears, Museum Judengasse maintains a nearly complete database (in German with bios and some pictures) of local Jews who were deported and exterminated during Hitler’s reign of anti-Semitic terror, 1933-45, (database is positioned at back of museum and upstairs; ask cashier to point the way). Next door (on Battonnstrasse) a poignant wall memorial (pictured) was erected in honor of these Holocaust victims. 
The name of each Jew, when and where they were murdered, is engraved on a small steel cube mounted on the wall enclosing the *Old Jewish Cemetery. One cube reads: “Walter Jonas, 1906-1943, Auschwitz.” Sadly, the memorial contains seemingly endless rows of such cubes totaling more than 11,000. The most recognized Frankfurt-born Jew, Anne Frank became the face of the Holocaust after the publication of her world-famous diary. To learn more about Anne and see where she was born, refer to my below-listed Anne Frank Reflective Walk. *Note: The first known burial in the Old Jewish Cemetery dates from 1272, and the last burial here took place in 1828. The door to the cemetery is always kept locked but if you’d like the key to go inside and pay your respects, notify the cashier at Museum Judengasse and leave either your passport or DL behind as security.
Click here for Frankfurt Entertainment, Eats and Shopping.
Click here for Accommodations Frankfurt.
Click here for Introduction Frankfurt.
Click here for Frankfurt Airport.
Click here for do-it-yourself Frankfurt.
Click here to find the birthplace of Anne Frank.
(This page was last updated June 2011.)
COMMENTS
PLEASE take a moment to let me and others know your thoughts about Frankfurt, or the information on this page, or perhaps you have a question about a particular sight. Simply type in your comment below and click "Post as" (note that you can login via your Facebook or Twitter account in which case we'd get to see your avatar). To finish, this is an open message board, thus please refrain from using foul language or disrespecting others. Thank you, Brett Harriman