Westend

Around 28,500 people live in the Westend, on about 1.5 square miles split for statistical purposes into a northern and a southern half that feel like one quarter. In the Middle Ages this was farmland, heath and meadow with a handful of estates, and those estates gave the streets their names: the Hellerhof and the Kettenhof were both working farms. Once the city fortifications came down in the early 19th century, wealthy Frankfurt families started building villas along the Bockenheimer Landstraße. The Rothschildpalais, the Gontardsches Gartenhaus and the Villa Leonhardi are the best known of them.

The Westend is now one of the most expensive residential quarters in Germany, with prices that have roughly doubled over the past decade. Parking is scarce, there are few garages, and residents complain about both. None of that is your problem as a visitor, but it explains the atmosphere: this is a quiet, well-kept, distinctly moneyed part of town.

It is also where the skyline actually stands. Most of Frankfurt's high-rises rise from the Bockenheimer Anlage, the Taunusanlage and the Mainzer Landstraße: the Park Tower at about 377 feet, the Opernturm at about 558 feet, the twin Deutsche Bank towers at about 509 feet each, the Trianon at about 610 feet and the Frankfurter Büro Center at about 466 feet. The tallest of them all, the roughly 843-foot Messeturm, was the tallest building in Europe until 1997.

Between the towers, the Westend keeps its 19th-century fabric, plus a layer of 1950s buildings and some blunt 1970s blocks that were put up without much regard for their surroundings. Those blocks triggered the Häuserkampf, the bitter protest movement against property speculation and the displacement of ordinary residents that shaped Frankfurt politics for years. The green counterweight is the Palmengarten, the botanical garden with its tropical greenhouses, and the Goethe University campus that moved into the Westend in 2001.