Alte Oper

Stand on the wide square and listen for a moment. Water splashes in the fountain in front of you. Footsteps cross the paving stones, and somewhere a café chair scrapes. Then lift your eyes to the long, pale stone front of the building ahead. Its columns, arches, and statues catch the light. This is the Alte Oper, Frankfurt's Old Opera House, and it is one of the great survivors of this city.

The name can confuse first-time visitors. Today this is not an opera house at all. It is a concert hall and a venue for congresses and events. The city's opera company performs in a newer theatre complex a short walk away. Locals simply kept the old name, and the word 'old' now carries a second meaning, because this building came close to being lost forever.

The story begins in the late nineteenth century. Frankfurt was then a wealthy city of merchants and bankers, and its citizens wanted a grand stage for opera. Much of the money came from private donors, not from a royal court. That detail matters. Many German cities had opera houses built by kings or princes. Frankfurt's was largely a gift from its own citizens.

The architect was Richard Lucae, from Berlin. He designed the building in the style of the Italian High Renaissance — the style of grand palaces in sixteenth-century Rome and Florence, with strong symmetry, round arches, and classical columns. Sadly, Lucae died before the building was finished. Other architects completed his design, and the opera house opened in 1880.

The opening was a major social event, and the German Emperor, Wilhelm the First, came to see it. According to a popular story, he looked around the lavish interior and remarked that he could not afford such a thing in Berlin. Nobody can fully verify the exact words. But Frankfurt people still enjoy telling the tale, because it shows the pride of a city that built a palace for music with its own money.

Now look up toward the top of the main front. Across the facade runs an inscription in German: 'Dem Wahren, Schönen, Guten.' In English, that means 'To the true, the beautiful, the good.' These three ideals come from classical philosophy and were central to German thought in the age of Goethe and Schiller. The building states its purpose in stone: art should serve truth, beauty, and goodness.

The facade also carries figures from art and music. Look for the statues of Goethe, Frankfurt's most famous son, and of Mozart. Higher up, on the roofline, sculpted figures stand against the sky, including winged horses. In Greek myth, the winged horse Pegasus is linked to poetry and inspiration. It is a fitting symbol for a house built for music and drama.

Then came the Second World War. In 1944, Allied bombing raids struck central Frankfurt, and the opera house burned. The roof and interior were destroyed. Only the outer walls and parts of the facade remained standing. After the war, the city had to rebuild homes, offices, and streets first. The burned shell of the opera house waited, and it waited for a very long time.

Here is something many visitors do not know. For decades, the ruin stood empty in the middle of a modern, rebuilding city. People came to call it 'the most beautiful ruin in Germany.' Weeds grew inside the walls. There were serious proposals to demolish it completely and use the land for something new. For a while, it looked like the building's story might end there.

Instead, ordinary citizens stepped in again — just as they had in the nineteenth century. A citizens' initiative formed to save the building, and it collected donations from people across the city. The campaign kept public pressure on the politicians. Eventually the city agreed to reconstruct the building. The outside was restored to look much as it once did, while the inside was rebuilt as a modern hall for concerts and conferences.

The Alte Oper reopened in 1981. So the building you see has two lives. The stone exterior follows the nineteenth-century design, carefully repaired and completed. Behind it, the interior is largely a creation of the late twentieth century, built for orchestras, soloists, popular music, and large gatherings. If you attend a concert, you will step from a Renaissance-style palace into a contemporary auditorium.

Turn around and take in the square itself, the Opernplatz. The fountain in front of the building is named after the architect, Lucae, and it is a popular meeting place. To one side runs a green belt of parks. These gardens follow the line of Frankfurt's old city fortifications, which were removed in the early nineteenth century. Nearby is a street that locals call the Fressgass, roughly 'the eating lane', lined with restaurants, delicatessens, and cafés.

The contrast here is worth a pause. Look past the opera house and you will see the glass towers of the banking district rising above the treetops. Frankfurt is often called 'Mainhattan', after the river Main and the skyline of Manhattan. Few views show the city's character so clearly. A rebuilt palace of music stands in the foreground, while modern finance rises behind it. Old and new sit side by side.

Before you move on, look once more at the pale stone. Some blocks are slightly different in tone from others, because the walls hold both original stone and later repairs. Listen to the fountain again, and to the voices around you. This square was once a field of rubble. Now people sit here, eat ice cream, and wait for friends. As you walk away, remember the words above the doors: to the true, the beautiful, the good.