As I mentioned in my last post, the other place that I wanted to see in Frankfurt was the Städel Art Museum. To get there from the Old Town, I had to cross the river. Nearby is a Frankfurt landmark, the Eisener Steg (Iron Bridge). It is a pedestrian footbridge that was originally built in 1912, and then rebuilt in 1946 after the war.
The bridge has become an alternative to the Pont de Arts in Paris where couples used to put padlocks to symbolize their love. The "love locks" were removed from the Paris bridge in 2015, but the Iron Bridge still has them... perhaps thousands of them, but not as many as there were on the Pont de Arts.
The bridge is also a great vantage point for photographing Frankfurt's skyline.
Walking along the south side of the Main River also provides good views of the city.
The southern bank of the river is lined with museums. They include the Museum of Design, the Museum of World Cultures, the Architecture Museum and the Film Museum. However, the most important is the Städel Museum.
The museum was founded in 1817 after Johann Städel, a wealthy banker and patron of the arts left his extensive collection, his entire fortune and his house for the creation of an art institute. In 1878 a new building, in neo-Renaissance style, was built as a home for the museum. The Städel fortune was used to expand the collection including works by contemporary artists. In 1937, seventy-seven modern paintings were confiscated by the Nazi government which judged them to be "degenerate art". In 1939 the remaining collection was hidden at a castle in Bavaria to protect the art from Allied bombing. Indeed, the museum suffered damage during the war, and it was rebuilt in 1966.
Today the museum has in its collection more than 3000 paintings spanning the 13th through the 21st centuries.
In the next post we will go inside and look at some the artwork.
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