FRANKFURT
Soccer City and Stadium Guide
Frankfurt Commerzbank Arena
The
Commerzbank Arena stadium is the seats about 48,000. On
your visit to Frankfurt, you’ll
think the Commerzbank owns the city. You might be pretty much right.
Their name is on a building almost everywhere you turn, including the
tallest skyscraper, with view restaurant at the top. So it’s natural
they would name the stadium. A stadium was first built o the spot in
1925, but upgraded a number of times originally named WaldStadion (Forest
Stadium) for its location surrounded by woods west of the city. The current
stadium was built from the ground up in 2005.
To get to the stadium, located between downtown Frankfurt and the airport, take the S8 or S9 train from platform 103 and 104 underground at the Hauptbahhof in the direction of Mainz and Wiesbaden. It’s the same train that goes to the airport. The stadium is a bit of a walk from the dedicated “Frankfurt Stadion” stop, though shuttle busses will be running.
If
you can’t make it to a match but want to check out the stadium
anyway, several practice fields lay before the stadium, where team workouts
or public events are sometimes held and beach volleyball in the summer.
There is an indoor swimming pool and the stadium has a Museum as well
as Fan Shop covering the gloried history of the Eintracht Frankfurt men’s
Bundesliga team, with trophies, photographs, jerseys, coaching and even
an exhibit of field lawn care.
Follow
the footsteps around to the open platform where you can view the stadium
and watch the special lighting
system cooking the field to make the grass grow. There is some information
in German at the museum about the women’s
team of Frankfurt, for the women’s
FIFA visit. For more history of woman’s soccer in Frankfurt,
you can go to the Steinerne Haus tavern in the city where the first
Ladies Football
Club
was founded in 1930 after Lotte Specht, the daughter of a local butcher
put an ad in the newspaper looking for other women interested in playing.
What To Do In Frankfurt
Frankfurt
am Main is Germany's most cosmopolitan city, best known as a financial
services
center and home of international trade fairs like
the Frankfurt Book Fair and International Auto Show. Almost 80 percent
of Frankfurt was leveled in the Second World War and reborn as a modern
metropolis. The financial district with its towering skyline is a quite
impressive. Frankfurt’s
Airport (Flughafen) has long be the hub of international flight arrivals,
principally
as
the
home
of
Lufthansa,
though other cities have been gaining more direct flights. The city main
rail station is about a 12 minute train ride from the Flughafen Station,
served by both S-Bahn and mainline IC, IR and ICE trains. The main station
is served by both underground subways and street trams. The Bahnhof Viertel
(station quarter) is the area near the station, the old city (Altstadt)
and river bank where the Football Garden is about four tram stops.
Museums
Frankfurt
has a whole gang of museums to visit of varying stripe and kind. A
museum row along
the Sachsenhausen side of the Main River embankment
has 16 museums from the likes of the Icon Museum where the various icons
of human existence are examined from Christ and the Black Madonna to
the Material Girl Madonna and Marilyn Monroe the magnificent Städel
Institute of Art, one of Germany’s most important art museums,
the Frankfurt German Film Museum, and Museum for Applied Arts. Across
the river in the oldest part of the city, Frankfurt’s Gothic Cathedral
St Bartholomew's has the Cathedral Museum where the Imperial crown on
temporary loan from state history museum will be on display (see Frankfurt
Cathedral Dom Museum), next to it the Comic Art Museum (see Caricatura
Museum)
and nearby the Frankfurt Museum of Modern Art.
The Zeil Shopping District
The central shopping area at the heart of Frankfurt city center is the
Zeil, Germany's busiest shopping street with the Zeilgalerie mall, brand
shops, and department stores. From upmarket designer goods to simple
products, restaurants and street side entertainers. Go to the top of
the gallerie for a rooftop restaurant view of the city and packed shopping
street below or see a movie in the multiplex in the sky. Shop the stalls
of an artfully stunning mall within a mall with its glass hole to infinity.
The Zeil is located above the Hauptwache underground stop and a walk
from the old town of Romerberg Square. For kids, the Kinder Museum is
an activity center where children get to take on the roles of adults,
taking a crack at being cooks, bakers, doctors, engineers in pint sized
play themed play areas.
Goethe House
Goethe House, the birthplace of Germany’s most famous literary figure, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, take a journey through upper-middle class life in the 18th century, on four floors of the original house and museum exhibition center, where readings and other related events are held (see Goethe Birthplace House).
St Pauls Church
St. Paul's Church built from 1789 to 1833, called the cradle of Germany democracy has possibly played the most significant historical role in the city. No longer a church but institutional center, Frankfurt’s St Paul’s is where Germany's first freely elected parliament, the national assembly met in 1848, forming the basis of today’s German constitution.
Römerberg Square and "Römer" Town Hall
Frankfurt
is not generally thought of as one of Germany’s quaint
old towns, but since 1986, the half-timbered buildings housing traditional
restaurants and the old town hall, known as the "Römerberg",
have been at the heart of the old quarter. These old facades where reconstructed
from historical plans, giving the modern city an old world core. Frankfurt's
first bank was founded in the 17th century structure on the corner of
the square, called the "Grosser Engel“ (Great Angel), while
three joined patrician town houses from the 1300s form the Gothic tri-gabled
facade of the Römer town hall - Frankfurt's famous landmark. The
historic rathaus town hall is still the Frankfurt mayoral residence.
For teddy bear fans stop at the Teddy Paradies for a world of fuzzy friends
(see Teddy
Paradies Shop).
Excursions - Day Trips
One of the
pleasures of Frankfurt is that you don’t have just
Frankfurt to explore. This area of central Germany has a number of fascinating
sites and cities within an hour or less by train from Frankfurt. To the
north is Bad Homberg with its real old town and the Saalburg Roman Fort
on the ancient Germania Roman border (see German
Limes).
Hanau is the first stop on the Grimm Brothers trail. To the west is
Mainz, the traditional middle-ages center of the Rhineland
with its great cathedral (see Mainz
Cathedral) and the Gutenberg Museum
(see Gutenberg Mainz) and a starting point of river cruises of the middle
Rhine with its castle top
wine vineyard
banks (see KD
Rhine Cruises), and across the river is the royal spa town
of Wiesbaden with its imperial era casino. © Bargain
Travel Europe
Dresden
Sinsheim/Heidelberg
Wolfsburg
Best hotel and vacation deals in Frankfurt on TripAdvisor
Web Info
Frankfurt
Tourism
These articles are copyrighted and the sole property of Bargain Travel Europe and WLPV, LLC. and may not be copied or reprinted without permission.
See Also:
FIFA
WOMEN'S WORLD CUP 2011 - TOURING GERMANY
HOW RAIL
PASSES WORK
CITY NIGHT LINE - GERMAN SLEEPER TRAIN
