Hauptwache

This guide to the Hauptwache in Frankfurt starts with a building that looks like an untouched 1729 guardhouse but isn't. It follows the structure through its life as a militia jail holding the outlaw Schinderhannes, an 1833 attempt by revolutionaries to storm it, and a turn as a city cafe after Prussia disbanded the militia in 1866. By 1967 the city was digging its underground railway straight beneath the square where the guardhouse stood.