Altstadt (the Old Town)

Frankfurt's Old Town sits on the north bank of the Main and covers barely 0.2 square miles, which makes it the city's smallest district with just under 4,000 residents. Almost none of it is original. Allied bombing in World War II erased the medieval center, and what you walk through today is a careful rebuild: 35 houses on roughly 75,000 square feet between the cathedral and the Römer, 15 of them faithful reconstructions of the buildings that stood there before.

The Römerberg is the square everyone photographs. The Römer has served as Frankfurt's city hall since 1405, and its stepped gabled facade is the image that ends up on postcards. Couples come straight out of the registry office inside for wedding photos, flower stalls and street musicians set up in front, and from late November the square fills with the Christmas market. A few steps away, the Archäologischer Garten (Archaeological Garden) exposes Roman foundations and the remains of a Staufer-era wall right in the open air.

The second landmark is the Kaiserdom (Imperial Cathedral of St. Bartholomew). Kings of the Holy Roman Empire were elected here from 1356 and emperors crowned from 1562. Its west tower rises about 312 feet and is visible across the whole city. Close by, the green dome and gold cross of the Paulskirche (St. Paul's Church) mark the building where the first freely elected German national assembly met in 1848. Two more churches anchor the quarter: the Katharinenkirche from 1678 and the Hauptwache guardhouse from 1730.

The Old Town has always been a place of writers and painters. Goethe, Clemens Brentano and the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer all lived here, as did the composer Georg Philipp Telemann. Today the district holds the Museum für Moderne Kunst (Museum of Modern Art), the Frankfurter Kunstverein, the Schirn Kunsthalle, the Historisches Museum and the Caricatura museum of comic art, plus weekly markets between the Römer and the cathedral where locals still buy flowers, bread and fish.