Alte Oper

The Alte Oper — the Old Opera House — is a 19th-century neo-Renaissance opera house on Opernplatz, completed in 1880 and modelled on the Garnier opera in Paris. Bombed to a roofless shell in 1944, it stood empty for three decades until rebuilt as a concert and conference hall in 1981. It no longer hosts opera — that role has passed to the modern Oper Frankfurt near Willy-Brandt-Platz — but the Alte Oper is still the city's most prestigious concert venue, with the Frankfurt Museumsorchester, the hr-Sinfonieorchester and a wide programme of international classical, jazz and world music.

The interior was rebuilt in plain modern style with only token nods to the original opulence, but the restored portico, with its inscription "Dem Wahren, Schönen, Guten" ("To the True, the Beautiful, the Good"), is essentially intact. The plaza out front fills with a Christmas market in winter, an Italian-themed Opernplatzfest in summer, and is one of the best people-watching spots in the city.

things to do sight architecture music
A story
The bombed shell of the Alte Oper stood empty for thirty years after the war. A 1965 newspaper campaign by the Frankfurter Allgemeine called it "Germany's most beautiful ruin" — and turned around enough public opinion that the rebuild was finally commissioned in 1976. It reopened in 1981 with Mahler's Eighth Symphony, the same work that had inaugurated the original building in 1880.

Other places in Things to Do