culture
The Museumsufer: Frankfurt's Museum Riverbank on the Main
A dense cluster of museums lines the banks of the River Main in Frankfurt, from the Stadel to the German Film Museum. A guide to the Museumsufer and its summer festival.
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Few cities pack as many museums into as short a stretch of riverbank as Frankfurt. The Museumsufer, or museum embankment, is a concentration of institutions along the River Main, chiefly on the south bank at the Schaumainkai, that together form one of Germany's most important cultural districts.
The line-up is deliberately varied. The Stadel Museum provides the great survey of European art, while close by are the Deutsches Filmmuseum, devoted to cinema, and the Deutsches Architekturmuseum, which explores the built environment. The Museum fur Weltkulturen looks at world cultures, the Museum Angewandte Kunst covers applied arts and design, and the Liebieghaus displays sculpture from antiquity onwards. Other museums, including institutions on the north bank, extend the offering further.
The appeal of the Museumsufer is that the museums are within walking distance of one another along a pleasant riverside promenade. It is possible to combine two or three in a day, with the walk between them along the Main as part of the experience.
Each summer the embankment becomes the stage for the Museumsuferfest, one of the largest cultural festivals in Frankfurt. Over a weekend in late August the riverbanks fill with stages, food stalls and crowds, and many of the museums stay open late, turning the district into a single open-air event.
For visitors planning a cultural day out, buying a combined museum ticket can be worthwhile if you intend to see several collections. As opening days vary between institutions, and most close on Mondays, checking each museum's current hours in advance is the best way to build an itinerary along the river.
Two practical tips help. The Museumsufer Ticket, a combined pass valid for two consecutive days, gives entry to a large number of the participating museums and quickly pays for itself if you plan to see several. And on most Saturdays a large flea market runs along the Schaumainkai beside the museums, so a morning of browsing secondhand stalls can be combined with an afternoon of galleries. The riverbank promenade itself is free and open at all hours, making the Museumsufer as much a place for a riverside walk as a cultural destination.