Frankfurter Römer

This guide to the Frankfurter Römer opens on the night of March 22, 1944, when incendiary bombs fell almost silently on the Römerberg before the fire took hold, destroying the largest half-timbered old town in Germany. It traces the three gabled houses merchants sold to the city starting in 1405, the facade's repeated postwar touch-ups, and president Theodor Heuss reopening the rebuilt hall in 1955. Climb inside to the Kaisersaal, where fifty-two painted rulers look down from the walls, from Barbarossa to the last Habsburg emperor.