Frankfurt's Artistic Pulse: Museumsufer & Beyond

We're standing here before a villa that looks as if it stepped straight out of a fairy tale book onto Frankfurt's Museumsufer. Leonhard Romeis built this historicist little palace in 1896 for the textile entrepreneur Heinrich von Liebieg – a man who had made his fortune in Bohemia and wanted to fulfill his dream in Fra…

Liebieghaus | 🔗 wikipedia.org

Diskuswerfer Liebieghaus 2608 | 🔗 wikipedia.org

File:Liebieghaus Galerieflügel Haupteingang | 🔗 wikimedia.org

The building before us, with its neoclassical façade on Schaumainkai, has housed one of Germany's most significant art collections since 1878 – and it only exists because a Frankfurt merchant made a radical decision in 1815. Johann Friedrich Städel bequeathed his entire fortune and art collection not to his family, but…

Das Städel Museum mit Städel Garten | 🔗 wikipedia.org

Before us stands one of the boldest architectural statements on the Museumsufer: Richard Meier's Museum Angewandte Kunst from 1985. Three white cubes, precisely proportioned, connected by a glass corridor to the historic Villa Metzler from the 19th century. Meier, the American architect, made no compromises here—these …

Luftansicht Museum Angewandte Kunst und Villa Metzler | 🔗 wikipedia.org

Fourteen meters high, fifty tons heavy, and yet it seems almost weightless – the Euro sculpture by Ottmar Hörl has stood here on Willy-Brandt-Platz since December 2001, just in time for the introduction of the Euro. A giant blue Euro sign, surrounded by twelve yellow stars deliberately arranged without fixed order – ea…

Eurotower mit Euro-Skulptur (cropped) | 🔗 wikipedia.org

Here on the Zeil, right in the middle of the shopping bustle, rises an almost five-meter-high bronze sculpture – Richard Heß's David and Goliath from 1983. The young David stands triumphantly on the severed head of the giant, the sling still in his hand, his gaze directed upward. Goliath lies beneath him, a massive bod…

File:David und Goliath in 3D 1 | 🔗 wikimedia.org

We're standing in front of the Steinernes Haus at the Römerberg – one of Frankfurt's oldest buildings, whose medieval façade has housed a rather radical institution since 1829: the Frankfurter Kunstverein. This isn't a museum in the classical sense. There's no permanent collection here, no old masters patiently waiting…

File:Frankfurter-Kunstverein-2014-Ffm-220 | 🔗 wikimedia.org

File:Frankfurter Kunstverein 2018 | 🔗 wikimedia.org

File:Frankfurter Kunstverein mit Skulptur „Big Trees“ (2015) von Joko Avianto an der Fassade | 🔗 wikimedia.org

Before us stands Hans Hollein's architectural statement from 1991—a building that deliberately breaks with everything we've seen so far. While Meier's Villa Metzler frames art with elegant restraint, the MMK challenges us with its triangular footprint. Frankfurters affectionately call it the "Tortenstück"—the slice of …

Museum fuer Moderne Kunst Portalseite | 🔗 wikipedia.org

From the loud questions of contemporary art, we step into a space of quiet answers—or perhaps of quieter, deeper questions. The Icon Museum, housed in the Baroque Deutschordenshaus directly on the Alte Brücke, marks the eastern conclusion of our Museumsufer. The simple elegance of the facade doesn't reveal the spiritua…

File:Ikonen-Museum (V-1) | 🔗 wikimedia.org