Alte Oper

This guide to Alte Oper in Frankfurt opens with a puzzle: a building named opera house where no fully staged opera has played in over four decades. It traces Richard Lucae's hall from its 1880 opening with Mozart's Don Giovanni through the night in March 1944 when bombing raids gutted it to its outer walls, leaving a shell so admired in ruin that people called it Germany's most beautiful ruin. A city official nicknamed Dynamite Rudi wanted the walls cleared for a parking lot, and Frankfurt's own citizens spent years campaigning to stop him. Look up at the motto still carved above the entrance.