Frankfurt Walking Tour

We set off today to join a four-hour walking tour around the old city. Missing our morning coffee, we found the stylish Caffè Monza. We found our group on the corner of Römer Square, named after the Romans who built a bridge over the river Main, with a single staging post nearby. From this modest beginning (the ruins are nearby) a great city grew..

Our group leader, Anne, an enthusiastic American/German, led off her 20-odd mix of American, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand and other tourists, She has lived in Frankfurt for 10 years and really knows her stuff,

We couldn’t enter the mighty KaiserDom, the cathedral where the Holy Roman Emperors were elected and crowned, as a Croatian First Holy Communion procession had just started,, with girls in white dresses and boys in long buttoned white cassocks.

The Holy Roman Empire, founded by Charlemagne in the year 800, covered most of central and north-western Europe, In its later German form,. it lasted until Napoleon closed it down in 1808.
The Emperor was chosen by a group of seven prince-electors who met in Frankfurt . In practice the crown usually went to the Habsburg (Austrian) ruler of the day. It was a big deal in its time, and served also as
a useful body for settling arguments between its members. It will pop up all over the place in later postings of our blog, so it’s worth a thumbnail sketch now!

The cathedral waa the only church in central Frankfurt to survive the two RAF bombing raids of March 1944, which wiped out the central city and cost 1500 lives. Over the years some original buildings have been restored. The charming House of the Spice Merchants, with its black arm holding up a set of golden scales, is one..

Next we walked down to the river Main, to the Eisener Steig Bridge. From here you can see the finance district’s skyscrapers towering over the traditional buildings below. Right on cue, a giant river barge cruised into view.

Next stop was the Carmelite Monastery, founded in 1246. The monks and nuns of this religious order (Neil’s sister Gloria was one of these for some months), named after Mt Carmel in the Holy Land, lived simple lives of prayer and meditation, cut off from the world. The building, is famous for the huge 16th-century wall paintings vividly imagining the life of Christ which decorate the cloister. This beautiful open cloister around an enclosed garden has a mood of peace and reflection.

My feet were getting pretty sore after three hours,. Neil pointed out a welcome Grandma Chair in the foyer, while the others completed their tour. Heading back to the Römer we refuelled withr a quick sausage bun and ice cream .

The last section of the tour told the story of the Jews of Frankfurt. Forbidden to join in the city’s trades, they were useful as money-lenders in an age when Christians were forbidden to charge interest on loans. A section of wall still remains from the first ghetto in Europe. This was the only place they were allowed to live. Not surprisingly it grew more and more crowded and insanitary over the years, In the late nineteenth century they were allowed to shift to a new, bigger area.. Here they flourished, until the coming of the Nazis to power in the 1930’s. On 9 November 1938, the infamous Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass)., all three synagogues , along with all the others in Germany, were destroyed. Stumbling stones (Stolpersteine) dotted around the city show what happened next, as Jewish families were arrested.and loaded into trains. The final stop on our tour was the Jewish Memorial Wall. 12,000 names are set into the wall, Visitors are invited to place a stone for remembrance. The family of Anne Frank, who had fled to Amsterdam , was one of these.Lue lisää