Frankfurt City Forest

This guide to Frankfurt City Forest starts at a worn grey boundary stone half buried beside a trail, and the medieval law that required officials to walk the forest each year touching and reciting the rules over every stone like it. It traces the land back to the Wildbann Dreieich, an imperial hunting reserve whose unwritten customs Emperor Ludwig the Bavarian finally had written down in 1338, and to Frankfurt's later purchase of the forest from Emperor Charles the Fourth. You'll hear why farmers kept swearing oaths each autumn before driving pigs in to fatten on acorns, a practice still named in the Upper and Lower Swine Track. Look for the unmarked stones along the path as you walk.