The Judengasse — the Jewish lane — was the walled and gated quarter to which the Jews of Frankfurt were confined from 1462 to 1796, and the most overcrowded urban ghetto in Western Europe. Most of it was demolished in the 19th century after emancipation, but the foundations of five houses and the mikveh (ritual bath) were uncovered during the 1980s construction of a city office block, and are now preserved in a small museum below ground level.
Above ground, the Börneplatz Memorial commemorates the 11,908 Frankfurt Jews murdered in the Holocaust — every name cast in a small bronze block set into the wall of the old Jewish cemetery. The neighbouring Old Jewish Cemetery itself, in use from 1272 to 1828, is one of the oldest in Europe; the gravestones of Mayer Amschel Rothschild and the early Frankfurt rabbis can still be found there. Free entry to the memorial and cemetery; small charge for the museum.