Frankfurt

Romans settled along the River Nidda in the reign of Vespasian, and Nida, at today's Heddernheim, became the capital of a Roman civitas. The city itself is first recorded in 794, when Charlemagne held an imperial assembly and synod at Franconofurd, "the ford of the Franks", and it became one of the two capitals of his grandson Louis the German. From 1356 German kings were elected in the church of St Bartholomew, and from 1372 Frankfurt was a free imperial city answerable only to the emperor. From 1562 to 1792 emperors were crowned here too, and the city's trade fairs laid the foundations of its stock exchange.

The Free City lost its independence when the Holy Roman Empire collapsed in 1806, regained it in 1815 and was later absorbed into the Prussian province of Hesse-Nassau. In 1848 the first democratically elected German parliament opened in St Paul's Church on 18 May. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was born here in 1749. Citizens founded the university in 1914, and in 1924 Ludwig Landmann became the city's first Jewish mayor. Under the Nazis the synagogues were destroyed and most of the Jewish population fled or was murdered, and in 1944 Allied air raids killed about 5,500 residents and almost completely destroyed one of Germany's largest medieval centres.

After the war Frankfurt became part of the new state of Hesse and was the first choice for West Germany's provisional capital in 1949, losing out to Bonn. Its stock exchange regained the national lead in the 1950s, the banks built ever-higher towers — the Commerzbank Tower was Europe's tallest building when completed in 1997 — and the European Central Bank was founded here in 1998. Between 2012 and 2018 the heart of the old town was reconstructed as the Dom-Römer Quarter.

Few German cities have as many museums. Most of its more than 30 stand on the Museumsufer, along and near both banks of the Main, among them the Städel, the Liebieghaus sculpture collection, the German Film Museum and the Schirn, while the Senckenberg natural history museum stands farther north. Goethe's birthplace is a museum, the Alte Oper, where Carmina Burana was first performed, is now a concert hall, and the city has continental Europe's largest English-language theatre.

Frankfurt has been a city of trade fairs for centuries, and the Book Fair each October is the largest of its kind in the world. Its people are notably diverse: half the population, and a majority of young people, have a migrant background, and a quarter are foreign nationals, among them many expatriates working in finance. The Jewish community, with more than 7,200 members, is the third largest in Germany.

The local institution is the apple-wine tavern, where Ebbelwoi is served by the Bembel, a salt-glazed stoneware jug. Sport centres on Eintracht Frankfurt, who play at the Waldstadion; the German Football Association has its seat in the city, and the Frankfurt Marathon is run through its streets each year.

Frankfurt had 778,589 inhabitants in 2025, making it Germany's fifth-largest city, and it forms one continuous conurbation with Offenbach, with more than 2.7 million people in its urban area and more than 5.8 million in the Rhine-Main region. It has the highest concentration of jobs in Germany — more than 922 for every 1,000 residents — and on working days and Saturdays about a million people commute in.

Finance dominates. The European Central Bank, the Bundesbank, the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and the headquarters of Deutsche Bank, Commerzbank, DZ Bank and KfW are here, and twenty of Germany's twenty-one skyscrapers stand in the city. The airport, the trade fair, logistics and Goethe University with its large hospital are the other big employers, and the city has gained European agencies, most recently the Anti-Money Laundering Authority in 2024.

The contrasts are sharp: the Westend's villas and the bank towers stand a short walk from the Bahnhofsviertel's open drug scene. Evenings are spent in Sachsenhausen's taverns, along the Main embankments and in Bornheim's bars. Mike Josef of the SPD has been mayor since May 2023, and a new city council was elected in March 2026.

Frankfurt's cooking is its own. Grüne Soße — grie Soß in dialect — is a thick cold sauce made from eggs and seven to nine fresh herbs, typically served with potatoes and hard-boiled eggs. Handkäs mit Musik is a small, translucent sour-milk cheese with a pungent aroma, topped with chopped or sliced onions. Frankfurter Würstchen are thin parboiled sausages in sheep's-intestine casings, flavoured by low-temperature smoking, and Frankfurter Rippchen is cured pork slowly heated in sauerkraut or broth.

All of it is meant to be eaten with Apfelwein, called Ebbelwoi locally, a tart cider made from sour apples. Most locals take it with a dash of sparkling water; a group orders a Bembel, the stoneware jug. The taverns of Alt-Sachsenhausen are the most famous places to drink it, and Bornheim's Berger Straße has its own apple-wine gardens.

For something sweet there is the Frankfurter Kranz, a ring of sponge cake layered with buttercream and red jam, and at Christmas Bethmännchen, small marzipan and almond pastries sold at the Christmas market and in the city's chocolate shops. The Kleinmarkthalle in the old town gathers local and international food vendors under one roof, and the farmers' market at the Konstablerwache sells produce from the surrounding countryside.