Old Town Frankfurt

 Our regional public TV folks (HR)....did a piece on Frankfurt and the old town area (Romer).  

For those who lived around Frankfurt in the 1970s/1980s....it was an interesting area with some history tied to them.  Tour buses would drive by and dump off international tourists.  Most people would say that it still had some marginal resemblance to the 1920s.

Somewhere along 2012, the city and developers put in a ton of money....developing the 'new' old town of Frankfurt.

So a topic of discussion has started up....does old town Frankfurt still exist, or is this new developed area like some Disney-Land 'show' (my term)?

I can remember the old town area of 1978/1979, and was fascinated with the rebuild effort after WW II (most of the buildings were destroyed).  

When this project was finished.....I walked around in 2019.  It is supposed to have the look and feel of the era before WW II.  I would tend to argue that it's a tourist magnet today and more of a show-piece. 

The buses still pull up....at least before Covid arrived, and there's a minimum of 5k tourists a day who walk through the old town area.  If you stopped for a ice cream or coffee with cake.....yes, you will pay a more hefty price than you would have ten years ago.

Do I still recommend the walk?  Yes, it's worth two hours to walk the district and take in the 'look' and 'feel' of what Frankfurt old town was like before WW II.

Would I buy any tourist crap from the shops?  No.  

And I would note this....it's a 15-minute walk from the old town area to Sachsenhausen pub district, which is still an aged area that has not changed in one-hundred years.  Go have a beer or two after the old town experience.