Frankfurt, Niemcy

Frankfurt am Main is Germany's financial capital and most-international city — the seat of the European Central Bank, the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority, the German Federal Bank's traditional headquarters, and the centre of a Rhine-Main metropolitan region of 5.8 million people. The Bankenviertel skyline (popularly 'Mainhattan' — the only proper high-rise district in Germany) gives the city its instantly recognisable silhouette: the Commerzbank Tower (259 m, Norman Foster, 1997, briefly Europe's tallest), the Messeturm (256 m, Helmut Jahn, 1991), the ECB headquarters in the redeveloped Großmarkthalle complex (2014, Coop Himmelb(l)au), and another dozen towers along Mainzer Landstraße and Taunusanlage. Beneath the skyscrapers, the Old Town is a deliberate post-war reconstruction: the Römer (the medieval town hall) and the Römerberg square survived because they were rebuilt; the Dom-Römer Quarter (opened 2018, fifteen reconstructed half-timbered houses on the original Krönungsweg coronation route) restored the Imperial-era streetscape destroyed in 1944. The Museumsufer (museum embankment) along the Main's south bank holds twelve museums in a one-kilometre line — the Städel Museum (one of Germany's most important art collections, with its newer underground extension by Schneider+Schumacher), the Liebieghaus sculpture collection, the German Architecture Museum, the German Film Museum, the Museum of World Cultures, the Communications Museum, and the Museum für Angewandte Kunst — all reachable in twenty minutes' walk from the Eiserner Steg footbridge. Sachsenhausen on the south bank of the Main is the historic Apfelwein (apple cider) district — Atschel, Adolf Wagner, Zum Gemalten Haus, and dozens of other Äppelwoi taverns serve the local cider in the traditional ribbed Bembel ceramic jug. The Frankfurt Book Fair (Frankfurter Buchmesse) every October is the world's largest, with 4,000+ exhibitors and 230,000 visitors over five days at the Messe complex. FRA airport is one of Europe's four busiest by traffic and the largest German rail hub for international connections — the airport's long-distance station handles ICE services to twenty German cities and to Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam and Vienna. Diplomatically, Frankfurt is the largest consular city in Germany after the Berlin embassy quarter — the US Consulate General on Gießener Straße is the largest US consulate in Europe, and many countries have visa-application centres (VFS Global, TLScontact) here. The city's international population is over 30 percent foreign-passport, the highest concentration of any German city.