Poetry and truth - the complexity of the 'New Old Town' and 'Old Sachsenhausen'
A tour for locals and visitors who want to see behind the framework of the Römerberg and Old Sachsenhausen.
The Frankfurt city center around the Römerberg can be seen as a kind of architectural museum. In the nucleus of the city, examples of buildings of many styles can be found. A piece of half-timbered old town has been added as a new 'exhibit'. This is contrasted with Alt Sachsenhausen, where there is still much of the original building fabric, but some of which has not been maintained very well and which is now being restored.
Until the Second World War, Frankfurt's old town was one of the largest undestroyed half-timbered towns in Germany. When looking back wistfully, however, one tends to overlook the fact that the buildings in the old town were very dilapidated and the living conditions were more than bad. After the war, the decision was made to build loose, contemporary housing and to rebuild only a few significant historically significant buildings. However, it remained difficult over the decades with the design of the 'Gudd Stubb' – the area between the Römer and the cathedral. Now the new old town has emerged there, or let's say 'new construction of a city district with a high memory value of the buildings that existed there before'. The district opened in September 2018. However, the restoration of the old building structure in Alt Sachsenhausen on the other bank of the Main is only just beginning. The residential and office buildings that were built there in the early 2000s by the architect Marie-Theres Deutsch and 'The Little Knight' and 'Libertine Lindenberg' by Franken Architekten seem to point the way for a symbiosis of old and new.
project selection
New old town
- historical Museum [LRO Lederer Ragnarsdóttir Oei]
- Architect houses in the Saalgasse [different architects]
- Kunsthalle Schirn (Bangert Jansen Scholz and Schultes)
- 'Stadthaus' [MEURER architects with cba architectes, Luxembourg]
- Museum of Modern Art [Hans Hollein]
- Houses in the old town (various architects)
Sachsenhausen
- New portico - Exhibition Hall for Contemporary Art (Christoph Mäckler Architekten)
- Apartment building Paradiesgasse 13 [Marie-Theres Deutsch Architects]
- 'Kleiner Ritter' (little knight), Libertine Lindenberg [Franken architects
