Germany Guide
Hesse
Goethe-Haus
Address: Grosser Hirschgraben 23-25
Opening time: Mon– Sat 10am–6pm, Sun 10am–5.30pm
Price: €5, English audio guide €2
Website: www.goethehaus-frankfurt.de
On the boundary between the Altstadt and the modern city centre, is the Goethe-Haus, where Johann Wolfgang von Goethe – commonly regarded as Germany's greatest writer – was born on August 28, 1749. Even if you're not familiar with Faust or The Sorrows of Young Werther it's an engrossing museum, for it creates a powerful impression of bourgeois family life in eighteenth-century Frankfurt. Take a good look at the bottom four steps of the main staircase: following the destruction of the house by bombs in 1944 on the anniversary of Goethe's death, the ruins rose no higher than these. Postwar reconstruction was loving and astoundingly effective.