Bahnhofsviertel (the station quarter)

At about 0.2 square miles and roughly 3,800 residents, the Bahnhofsviertel is Frankfurt's second-smallest district after the Old Town. In the 19th century it was mostly empty land: a few farmsteads by the Main, some country houses of wealthy families, and the city gallows. Industrialization brought villas and gardens, the gallows disappeared, and when the Taunusbahn railway began running in 1839 Frankfurt got its first station. Broad boulevards such as the Taunusstraße and Kaiserstraße were laid out alongside narrower streets like the Elbestraße and the Moselstraße.

Because the quarter came through the war less damaged than most, nightlife took hold quickly during the American occupation. By the 1960s that had turned into a red-light district along the Elbestraße and the Niddastraße, and in the 1980s an open drug scene followed. Frankfurt answered with supervised consumption rooms and social services, and since the turn of the millennium drug users have largely disappeared from the streets. Prostitution and dealing have not gone away. Treat it as you would any big-city station district: it is fine by day, busier and edgier after dark.

What most visitors notice first are the wide boulevards, which still give the quarter a metropolitan feel, and the towers above them. The Silberturm stands on Jürgen-Ponto-Platz, the Gallileo on the Kaiserstraße reaches about 446 feet, and on the Taunusstraße the Skyper ensemble combines a roughly 502-foot tower with the neoclassical Skyper Villa from 1915 and the Skyper-Carré.

The quarter's quiet surprise sits on the riverbank. When a side arm of the Main silted up in 1860, the city gardener Sebastian Rinz planted a park there. The vegetation reminded Frankfurters of the Mediterranean, so they named it the Nizza, after Nice. It remains one of the most popular green spaces in the city. The Bahnhofsviertel is also Frankfurt's true melting pot, and nearly every religious community in the city has a place of worship somewhere in these few blocks.