Museum of Applied Arts

This guide to the Museum of Applied Arts in Frankfurt opens with a literary puzzle: in 1815 Goethe folded two ginkgo leaves into a letter to Marianne von Willemer and wrote a poem asking whether the odd, two-lobed shape was one leaf split or two leaves fused. Most histories place that actual tree in Heidelberg, but you'll hear the rival claim made by the garden around you, planted from 1800 by an apothecary named Peter Salzwedel with ginkgoes, a giant redwood and a tulip tree. It follows the land through a banker's rose garden and Richard Meier's 1985 glass wing to the museum that grew up around Salzwedel's trees.