Nacht der Museen (Night of the Museums)

The Night of the Museums is one of the high points of Frankfurt's cultural calendar, and it regularly sets attendance records. The idea is simple and works: 40 museums stay open into the night, and visitors move between them seeing familiar collections in a very different light.

The Museumsufer, the museum embankment along the Main, is the natural center of gravity. The Städel Museum and its old masters, the Deutsches Architekturmuseum and the Deutsches Filmmuseum all take part, and the Museum Angewandte Kunst always does something out of the ordinary. Downtown, the crime museum lays out the case files of the city's worst offenders, the Geldmuseum turns coins and banknotes into a surprisingly good story, and the observatory points a telescope at the sky. Families gravitate to the Struwwelpeter Museum, while the Caricatura Museum pushes visual comedy about as far as it goes.

Every museum builds its own program: exclusive exhibitions, talks with the artists, installations, video art and workshops. Past editions have included works of the Neue Frankfurter Schule at the Caricatura Museum, a Stanley Kubrick tribute at the film museum, the city's archaeological finds at the Archäologisches Museum, an exhibition on urban cycling at the architecture museum, deep-sea creatures relit at the Senckenberg natural history museum and historic telescopes at the observatory.

Performance is half the appeal. Editions have featured a 1960s fashion show at the Museum Giersch, live film scoring at the Deutsches Filmmuseum, jugglers and acrobats at the zoo, oriental dance at the Bibelhaus, actors on stage at the architecture museum, an LED performance at the Museum für Kommunikation, Yiddish folk dance at the Museum Judengasse and a dance and visual arts theme at the Schirn Kunsthalle.

Then there is the music, which spills out of buildings that are usually silent: saxophone by candlelight at the cathedral museum, Brazilian rap at the Weltkulturen Museum, college rock and skate punk at the Museum für Kommunikation, chansons at the Struwwelpeter Museum, pop and improvised jazz at the Museum Giersch, Ghanaian music to play along with at the Junges Museum, Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht songs at the Haus am Dom, the state police orchestra at the crime museum, baroque flute at the Städel and a woodwind quintet at the Lufthansa Aviation Center.

Nobody goes hungry. All 40 venues serve something, from finger food and snacks to vegetarian plates, oriental dishes, wraps, savory pastries with Rheingau wine and grilled food in museum gardens. Drinks range from prosecco and cocktails to gin and, of course, Äbbelwoi, the local apple wine.

The interactive side is what people remember. Visitors have printed a sheet on a historic press, joined hands-on activities at the zoo, entered a drawing contest at the caricature museum, made their own miniature Bible at the Bibelhaus, sat through an Eritrean coffee ceremony at the Junges Museum, ridden a historic postal bus, flown a flight simulator at the Experiminta science center and crowded around the photo booth at the film museum.

It is a night for all ages, and the pleasure is in the planning: pick three or four museums that are walkable from each other, and let the rest of the evening happen.