Germany Guide
Hesse
Historisches Museum Frankfurt
Address: Römerberg
Opening time: Tues & Thurs– Sun 10am–6pm, Wed 10am–9pm
Price: €4
The bunker-like Historisches Museum Frankfurt has the decency to half-hide behind the pretty little thirteenth-century Gothic Nikolaikirche, which was used as a spectator stand during imperial coronations. The Historisches Museum's forbidding concrete exterior conceals a much older complex of buildings beyond, which incorporates the twelfth-century Romanesque Saalhof chapel – originally a court chapel and the oldest building in Frankfurt – in whose cellar emperors stored the imperial crown jewels when they were in Frankfurt. The museum's permanent and temporary exhibitions do a good job of tracing the city's history from 784 to the present day: along with the usual archeological exhibits and a display of the municipal silver, there's a giant model of the Altstadt as it was before its destruction, a section charting the city's experiences under the Nazis and a sizeable collection of medieval religious art, including some lovely woodcarving by Tilman Riemenschneider.