Historical Museum: Frankfurt Travel Guide (4.3★)

Two buildings, eight centuries

The museum is two buildings facing each other across a small square. On the riverside sits the old Saalhof complex. Its Staufer-era chapel, dating from around 1200, is the oldest surviving building in Frankfurt’s old town.

Opposite it is the new exhibition building, opened in 2017. It has steep gabled roofs and a pale stone facade, and its shape repeats the pitched rooflines of the Römerberg next door. Between the two, the square under your feet is part of the museum too.

What to look for inside

There is a lot here, so pick your floors. These are the parts that stay with people:

• Frankfurt Einst? (Frankfurt Once?): the main walk through the city’s history, from the Holy Roman Empire’s coronation city to banking capital.
• The old town models: a detailed model of the Altstadt before the war, built by the Treuner brothers, next to a model of the city in ruins in 1945. You will want to look at both for a while.
• Frankfurt Jetzt! (Frankfurt Now!): the contemporary city as Frankfurters describe it, with a rotating Stadtlabor (city lab) section.
• Collectors and Collections: the Saalhof wing, built around the private collections the museum grew out of.
• Junges Museum: a separate children’s museum in the complex, good if you are travelling with kids.

Most visitors spend 2–3 hours. If you only have 90 minutes, do the models and Frankfurt Einst?

Getting to Saalhof 1

Take the U4 or U5 to Dom/Römer and walk a few minutes south toward the river. From Hauptbahnhof the U4 gets you there directly in a few stops.

On foot, the museum is the last block before the Main on the south side of the Römerberg. The Eiserner Steg footbridge starts almost at its door. Cross it and you are on the Museumsufer, Frankfurt’s riverside row of museums, in about five minutes.

Timing your visit around the Römer

At the moment the museum opens at 11am Tuesday to Sunday. It closes at 6pm on most days and at 9pm on Thursdays. It is closed on Mondays. Museum hours change on public holidays and between seasons, so check the official site for this month’s schedule before you go.

This is a well-known museum on the city’s busiest square. Tour groups come for the Römer, Frankfurt Cathedral and the rebuilt DomRömer quarter, and the museum gets their spillover. Arriving at 11am usually puts you ahead of them.

The Thursday late opening is a good alternative. After work hours the galleries clear out, and you come out onto the Römerberg after the day-trippers have left.

A few practical points:

• Bags: large bags and coats normally go into the lockers before you reach the galleries. Have a coin ready, just in case.
• Tickets: prices and any free-entry days are posted at the ticket desk and on the museum’s official website. Check there instead of trusting older blog posts.
• Language: most labels are in German and English. You do not need to speak German.
• Order: start upstairs with the models. Seeing the old town before 1945 makes the reconstructed half-timbered houses outside much easier to read.

Combine it with the Kaiserdom, the Schirn Kunsthalle or a walk across the Eiserner Steg, and you have half a day without needing transport.