Frankfurt

The town bought the Romer in 1405 and it has been the city hall ever since. Holy Roman emperors' portraits run round the walls of the Kaisersaal upstairs. A fountain out in the square carries Justice. Her eyes are open above the scales, not bound.

It is called a cathedral although no bishop ever sat here; the name is owed to the imperial elections. Ten emperors were crowned in it, and the election chapel still stands beside the choir. The tower is 328 steps with no lift.

One wing lies buried under the garden lawn, added there in 2012. Round skylights bulge up through the grass and drop the light into it. Tischbein's Goethe in the Roman Campagna hangs here, and the sitter's legs do not add up once you look.

Of the towers in the banking district this is the one with a deck open to the public. A lift takes you into the fifties and a short flight of stairs puts you on an open roof. High wind closes the roof for the day, so ask at the desk downstairs first.

Citizens clubbed together to buy the Duke of Nassau's glasshouse plants, and the garden opened in 1871. The Tropicarium sets a different humidity in every room, so glasses fog over in the first one.

The market is indoors, so it trades through the rain, but the doors are shut on Sunday. A balcony upstairs pours wine by the glass and gives you nowhere to sit. The seven herbs for green sauce are sold here tied into one bundle.

A line from the Odyssey runs along the iron arch in Greek letters. Padlocks hang so thick on the railing that the weight has them cut off every few years.

The furniture, books and astronomical clock were carried out ahead of the war and survived it. The building follows the old plans, but what stands inside is what Goethe used. He wrote The Sorrows of Young Werther at the desk by the third-floor window.

The glass skin is set in diamonds, the same cut as the ribbed glass cider is served in. Frankfurters borrowed the glass's name for it, though the building is offices and cannot go inside.

The way into the underground is built as an old tram car breaking up through the pavement at an angle, and a first sight of it stops people as though they had come on an accident.

Cobbled lanes along the Main's southern bank, packed with apple wine taverns. A pine wreath over the door marks a house pouring cider it pressed itself. Sharing long tables with strangers is normal, so if you see a gap, ask and sit down.

The lanes between the cathedral and the Romer, lost in the war, were rebuilt in 2018 with copies of old houses mixed among new ones. The House of the Golden Scales is the most ornate. Benches by the fountain on the Huhnermarkt make a good pause.

A sculpture museum in Baron Liebieg's villa beside the Main. It holds sculpture alone, from ancient Egypt to neoclassicism, and the small rooms bring each piece close. Anyone may sit in the garden cafe, ticket or not.

Life-size dinosaur models stand in the forecourt of this natural history museum. Its prize is the dinosaur mummy, a duck-billed fossil with skin impressions intact. Early horse fossils from the nearby Messel Pit dig are on show as well.

Opened as an opera house in 1880, it was left a burnt-out shell by the war and stood as a ruin for decades. It reopened in 1981, though opera now plays elsewhere and this is a concert hall. Of an evening, the fountain square out front fills up.

A fort on the Limes, the Roman frontier through the Taunus hills, rebuilt from 1897 on Kaiser Wilhelm II's orders. The gatehouse and granary hold the museum. Buses run from Bad Homburg, and the old frontier bank carries on through the woods behind.

A Cistercian house founded in 1136 among the Rheingau vineyards, where the 1986 film Name of the Rose was shot. The monks' long dormitory survives intact. Wine is still made here, and tastings are held in a hall lined with old presses.