MAIN TOWER: Frankfurt Travel Guide (4.6★)

A roof you can stand on, 198 metres up

Most skyscrapers keep their best floor behind a glass wall. Main Tower puts you outside, on an open platform at roughly 198 metres, with a railing and nothing above but the antenna mast. The wind at that height is real, and you feel it on your face.

The building at Neue Mainzer Str. 52–58 was finished in 1999. It is the headquarters of Helaba, the Hessen-Thüringen state bank. Its shape is two joined parts: a rounded glass cylinder and a squarer block clad in stone. It reaches 200 metres to the roof and about 240 metres to the tip of the mast.

Getting to Neue Mainzer Straße

You will find the tower on the western edge of the Innenstadt, where the old ramparts became the Taunusanlage park. Two stations put you within a few minutes’ walk:

• Taunusanlage (S-Bahn, the central tunnel served by most S-lines): walk south-east through the park.
• Willy-Brandt-Platz (U-Bahn U1–U5 and U8): walk north along Neue Mainzer Straße.
• Alte Oper (U6/U7): a slightly longer walk south past the opera house square.

Driving is a poor choice here. The banking district is dense, and the S-Bahn from Frankfurt Airport reaches Taunusanlage in well under half an hour.

The airport-style check before the lift

Your visit starts at street level, not at the top. Because this is a working bank tower, visitors pass through a security check much like an airport’s. Bags go through a scanner, and you walk through a detector.

Travel light. Large luggage and bulky bags can cause problems, so leave the suitcase at your hotel or in the lockers at the Hauptbahnhof. Pocket knives and similar items are best left behind entirely.

Before you head for the lifts, look around the lobby. It holds two permanent artworks: Bill Viola’s video installation The World of Appearances and a large mosaic by Stephan Huber. Most visitors walk straight past both.

The lift itself is fast; the ride up the shaft takes well under a minute, and your ears will notice. It drops you near the top. A short set of stairs then leads out to the platform.

Reading the Mainhattan skyline

Up top, the platform runs around the roof, so you can work your way through every direction. This is the best place in Frankfurt to understand why the city earned the nickname “Mainhattan.” The towers stand close enough to read individually.

What to pick out:

• Commerzbank Tower just to the north-east, for years the tallest building in the European Union, with its triangular plan and stacked sky gardens.
• Messeturm to the west, the pencil-shaped tower with a pyramid cap at the trade fair grounds.
• The European Central Bank to the east along the river, two twisted glass towers in the Ostend.
• The Kaiserdom (St. Bartholomew’s Cathedral) and the Römer old town, small and red-roofed below the glass.
• The Main itself, with its string of bridges, and the Sachsenhausen bank beyond.
• The Taunus hills on the north-western horizon on a clear day, and aircraft lining up for Frankfurt Airport to the south-west.

The deck closes when the weather turns. Thunderstorms, ice or strong wind shut the platform for safety, sometimes at short notice. On a grey, gusty day, check the tower’s official site before you queue.

Timing the evening: why late beats early

The opening hours suit a sunset visit. Every day the tower opens at 10am. It closes at 9pm Sunday to Thursday and runs to 11pm on Friday and Saturday.

The measured crowd figures point the same way. On weekdays the calmest stretch is 7pm–10pm. From Monday to Thursday that means 7pm until the 9pm close. On Friday the quiet window runs a full three hours, with the lights of the financial district coming on around you.

Weekends show a quiet window across the whole day, 10am–11pm, with no single rush hour flagged. Saturday is the most relaxed day to drift up whenever suits you. On Sunday, remember the earlier 9pm close.

Last admission comes before the listed closing time, and weather can cut an evening short. Don’t time your visit for the final minutes.

Getting up without the wait

This is one of the most-reviewed sights in Frankfurt, and the bottleneck is the security check, not the platform. A few habits help:

• Buy tickets on the official website if offered. The current price is posted there and at the ticket desk at the entrance. Booking ahead usually means less time standing at the counter.
• Have your bag ready to open, and keep phones, keys and coins together so the scanner moves quickly.
• Pay by card. Germany still leans on cash in small shops, but a major attraction like this takes cards at the desk.
• Bring a layer and hold your hat. It is noticeably colder and windier on the roof than at street level, even in summer.
• Shoot through the gaps, not the bars. The railing has a fine mesh in places; step close and angle the lens through the openings for clean skyline photos.

Two floors below the deck sits the Main Tower Restaurant & Lounge, a separate business on the 53rd floor. It works on reservations, and dinner guests use the same security entrance. If you want a drink with the view rather than the open air, book it in advance rather than hoping to walk in.

Around the block afterwards

Coming down puts you in a compact part of town that rewards a short walk. The Alte Oper, Frankfurt’s reconstructed 19th-century opera house, is a few minutes north. Its square fills with café tables in good weather, and the “Fressgass” food street runs east from it toward Hauptwache.

Head south and Willy-Brandt-Platz brings you to the giant blue-and-yellow euro sign, a favourite photo stop. Ten more minutes takes you to the Main riverbank and the Museumsufer, the row of museums on the Sachsenhausen side.

From there the Eiserner Steg footbridge leads to the Römerberg in about fifteen minutes. You will recognise its timbered façades from the roof.