Photo Courtesy: Greek National Tourism Organization/Isabela Pacini
Festive Frankfurt
Germany’s business and transportation hub offers plenty of leisure attractions, especially during the holidays
With strings of evergreen garlands and twinkling lights adorning city streets, Frankfurt truly sparkles come the holiday season. Centuries-old cathedrals illuminate nativity scenes with flickering candles. Storefronts fill windows with brightly painted nutcrackers. Performance halls add holiday concerts to their event calendars. Frankfurt enjoys a reputation as the center of European international banking and trade, and visitors commonly arrive in the city for transportation connections, whether by air or rail. But a wealth of cultural attractions, unique food and drink traditions and a charming Christmas market make Frankfurt a place worth lingering.
Photo Courtesy: Greek National Tourism Organization/Dietmar Scherf
Celebrating the Season at the Christmas Market
When late November arrives, Frankfurt kicks off the holiday season with its much-loved Weihnachtsmarkt—this year November 23 through December 22—a hallmark of the winter months since at least 1393. The market is centered in Frankfurt’s historic old town, twisting its way through the city’s pedestrian streets, from the Main Riverbank to the half-timbered buildings of the Römerberg district.
A long succession of wooden booths welcome friends and family with assorted Christmas goodies. Colleagues and neighbors meet after hours to sip steaming cups of Glühwein (mulled wine) and hot chocolate. Families dine on grilled sausages and potato fritters for dinner, then nibble on roasted almonds for dessert. Children line up to ride a two-story illuminated carousel, and shoppers fill their bags with traditional holiday gifts: delicate glass tree ornaments, hand-painted nutcrackers, gingerbread hearts and warm woolen hats, scarves and mittens.
Germany’s holiday markets share many attractions in common, but each town offers its distinctive slant on the season. In Frankfurt, locals gravitate toward hot apple wine, known colloquially as Ebbelwoi, a staple in this fruit-growing region. And shoppers purchase local specialties like Bethmännchen, melt-in-your-mouth marzipan cookies, and Quetschemännchen, little people fashioned from dried plums and nuts thought to bring good luck.
Photo Courtesy: iStock
Art and Culture, Old and New
Seasonal celebrations fill the concert calendar in Frankfurt’s theater. Holiday performances during the winter months include Christmas favorites like “The Nutcracker” and jazz reinterpretations of familiar carols, dramatic operatic productions with a cast of dozens, and simple concerts designed for young families.
Frankfurt’s grand opera hall, the Alte Oper, began hosting musical performances in 1880. Today’s historic opera building with its gracefully arched windows and creamy stucco façade, reconstructed following World War II, still hosts classical, jazz and pop concerts at Christmastime and year-round.
What surprises many visitors to the Alte Oper is that the venue doesn’t actually offer opera. For those productions, music lovers head to the much bigger Oper Frankfurt, a contemporary glass building and a mainstay for large works by the likes of Mozart, Wagner or Verdi. In 2026, Oper Frankfurt stages holiday-themed performances of Rimsky-Korsakov’s folk opera “The Night Before Christmas.”
Museums on the Waterfront
Ask a local Frankfurter about their city, and they may use the nicknames “Bankfurt,” referencing Frankfurt’s role at the heart of Europe’s financial industry, or “Mainhattan,” for its skyline of towering glass and steel office towers (an anomaly in Europe) on der Main—the city’s dividing river. But Frankfurt might just as easily be nicknamed “The City of Museums.” A total of 39 institutions make up the Museum Embankment, or Museumsufer, a collection that stretches primarily along the city’s downtown Main Riverbank.
One of Germany’s oldest art museums is the Städel Museum, which displays 700 years of European masterpieces and pairs nicely with a walk through the Liebieghaus Sculpture Collection, with works dating back as far as 450 BC.
Visitors learn about the past at The Historical Museum Frankfurt or explore the roots of its residents at the Jewish Museum Frankfurt. The city is also home to the German Film Institute & Film Museum, the Museum of World Cultures and the Museum of Modern Electronic Music (with an emphasis on techno and house music). The building where writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe once lived has been transformed into the Goethe House, featuring the furniture and library of books from his childhood. And because Frankfurt is a financial center, you can also visit the Money Museum to trace the evolution of currency from prehistory to the present.
Photo Courtesy: iStock
Everything Old Is New Again
If there’s one can’t-miss photo op in Frankfurt, it’s the Römerberg, a plaza bordered by colorful traditional half-timbered buildings that, back in the 16th century, was considered Germany’s most beautiful. From the square, you can also see the tower of St. Bartholomew’s, frequently called the Kaiserdom since Germany’s emperors were historically crowned here, and the red and white spire of St. Nicholas Church, especially apropos at Christmastime.
While most of the buildings on the Römerberg are in fact carefully reconstructed replicas built in the aftermath of WWII, their authentic architecture in addition to the traditional menus at the plaza’s restaurants make the square a popular spot for dinner and drinks, no matter the season. Visit Zum Standesämtchen or Haus Wertheym—the latter dating to 1479 and the rare Römerberg building to survive the war—for Frankfurt specialties like grilled sausages, Handkäse mit Musik (soft hand cheese with onions) or Grüne Soße (green sauce), made with sour cream and herbs and served alongside potatoes and hard-boiled eggs.
While you’re there, order a pitcher of local apple wine, delivered to the table in the gray and blue ceramic pitchers used here for centuries. It’s a Frankfurt tradition worth a toast.
Amy S. Eckert is a travel journalist and author whose work has appeared in National Geographic, The New York Times, The Saturday Evening Post and various AAA magazines. She divides her time between Michigan and Germany.
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