Frankfurt has rebuilt the quarter between Frankfurt Cathedral and Römerberg

Historic Old Town completely revamped

29.03.19

Author: Alexan­der Stumm, Photos: Dom Römer GmbH

Frank­furt am Main, the top example of German sky­scraper cityscapes, now has a new ar­chi­tec­tural at­trac­tion of a com­pletely dif­fer­ent nature. After almost 15 years of plan­ning, the ‘New Old Town’ was finally opened last autumn – an area of around 7,000 square metres between the cathe­dral and Römerberg with a total of 35 in­di­vid­ual build­ings.

View from the cathe­dral over Frank­furt. The new his­toric Old Town can be seen in the fore­ground, with Schirn Kun­sthalle to the left. Römerberg, St Paul’s Church and the sky­scrap­ers of the fi­nan­cial dis­trict can be seen in the back­ground. (Photo: Dom Römer / Uwe Dettmar)

The his­toric Old Town of Frank­furt, me­dieval at its core, was once the jewel of the city with im­mea­sur­able value for art history before it was ex­ten­sively bombed to rubble in the Second World War. The re­con­struc­tion of the area between the Frank­furt Cathe­dral, City Hall and St Paul’s Church started in 2012 after the Tech­ni­cal City Hall, a build­ing that had stood at this spot since the 1970s, was torn down.

Today the area, which is called the Dom-Römer Quarter, is once again divided into small sec­tions with 35 in­di­vid­ual build­ings, most of which are res­i­den­tial.
For FSB the new Old Town is also a type of open-air ex­hi­bi­tion: whether door handles, door­knobs or se­cu­rity fit­tings, the entire product range for build­ing en­trances can be dis­cov­ered here in all of the dif­fer­ent models, ma­te­ri­als and fin­ishes.

The ‘Goldene Waage’ build­ing di­rectly at the cathe­dral was once an emblem of the city. It has now been re­stored to its former glory, as true to the orig­i­nal as pos­si­ble, by Jourdan & Müller. (Photos: Dom Römer / left Uwe Dettmar, right Barbara Staubach)

What every­one is simply calling the ‘re­con­struc­tion project’ was ac­tu­ally an entire spec­trum of dif­fer­ent ar­chi­tec­tural en­deav­ours. The new Old Town is both a col­lec­tion of re­con­struc­tion pro­jects that aim to be as ac­cu­rate to the orig­i­nals as pos­si­ble and a series of his­tor­i­cally in­spired in­ter­pre­ta­tions and freely imag­ined new builds. The ap­proach of re­con­struct­ing build­ings true to their orig­i­nal design was applied par­tic­u­larly in the case of the ‘Goldene Waage’ build­ing.

In 1619, mer­chant Abraham van Hamel ren­o­vated me­dieval half-tim­ber build­ing in a grand late-Re­nais­sance style with a high gable. It was se­verely damaged by the dev­as­tat­ing air raid on 22 March 1944 and cleared away after the war.

Frank­furt ar­chi­tec­tural firm Jourdan & Muller re­con­structed this former city land­mark and re­stored it back to its pre-war con­di­tion thanks to ex­ten­sive re­search and several frag­ments saved from the rubble.

The re­con­structed facade is char­ac­terised by a strik­ing red painted timber frame, lots of floral em­bell­ish­ments and the golden scales hanging above passers-by at the level of the first upper floor. These golden scales are where the ‘Goldene Waage’ gets its name.

The three-storey build­ing is con­structed in ac­cor­dance with current build­ing codes and has modern tech­ni­cal systems in­stalled. It houses a café and a satel­lite office of the His­tor­i­cal Museum.

The ‘Alte Kaufhaus’ by architectural firm Morger + Dettli from Switzerland.



By con­trast, the ‘Alte Kaufhaus’ by ar­chi­tec­tural firm Morger + Dettli shows how a his­toric build­ing can be con­cep­tu­alised and trans­lated into a modern form. The narrow build­ing with just one window axis follows the di­vi­sion of storeys and well-pro­por­tioned gabled roof of its pre­de­ces­sor. But the com­pletely plain, rust-brown facade makes it a de­cid­edly con­tem­po­rary struc­ture. The res­i­den­tial build­ing com­bines cen­turies-old urban house build­ing tra­di­tion with modern design. The ar­chi­tects them­selves call their design ‘datable time­less­ness’.

The ‘Neue Paradies’ by Johannes Götz + Guido Lohmann from Cologne. (Both photos: Dom Römer)


Jo­hannes Götz + Guido Lohmann go one step further with the ‘Neues Paradies’ project. In this case, only the volume of the build­ing speaks to urban de­vel­op­ment spec­i­fi­ca­tions. In a self-con­fi­dent gesture, the ar­chi­tects made the slate shin­gles so typical of the his­toric Old Town into a state­ment element of their design. The four-storey facade is struc­tured by ridges nested into each other. The quirky jagged lines irk the viewer and cheek­ily thrust vis­i­tors into the re­al­i­sa­tion that the Dom-Römer Quarter is not hun­dreds of years old, but rather a 21st century cre­ation.

Image 1 of 3: The newly created ‘Hühn­er­markt’ with the Stoltze foun­tain. (Photo: Dom Römer / Uwe Dettmar)

Image 2 of 3: View of the Hühn­er­markt, with the ‘Neues Paradies’ build­ing on the right. (Photo: Dom Römer / Uwe Dettmar)

Image 3 of 3: On the left, Braubach­strasse 23 by ar­chi­tec­tural firm Ein­gart­ner Khor­rami. On the right, the ‘Haus am Reb­stock’, another re­con­struc­tion by Jourdan & Müller. (Both photos: Dom Römer)

To be fair, the Frank­furt’s his­toric Old Town is and remains ir­rev­o­ca­bly lost. The new quarter cannot and should not be a return to the past. Re­gard­less of the quality of the in­di­vid­ual designs, the large-scale urban de­vel­op­ment project, with its mix of dif­fer­ent ar­chi­tec­tural ap­proaches, shows the mul­ti­fac­eted po­ten­tial of design freedom that the task of re­con­struct­ing in the present day opens up.