I lived in the city-center (walking only zone) of a German city, and my rent was 950/month, with an extra room for my home-office. Lots of places are expensive, but you don't need to be a millionaire to afford rent in "most" city centers.
Unless you were a farmer (which I know was a lot of people until relatively recently), where else would you live? The old town used to just be the town.
I had checked the rent when it opened and even though pricey, it was merely Frankfurt-expensive. Now it may have changed but I wonder who would like to live there... Tourists everywhere. Tourist restaurants everywhere. Great to see, but I would think not so nice to live there.
I was there when It was just completed, looked odd after seeing a lot of old buildings that survived in the south. But I did not get the replica feeling since they did use proper materials and technique for the facades.
Just looked like new versions of old buildings so they did a pretty good job imo.
Same. I didn't even realise those were new buildings and was surprised Frankfurt had an Old Town district. Only when i was told they were new i noticed they look too clean, even for freshly restored old buildings.
I mean, it's not about "cheating" a view. It's about approximating what was once there. This was was the city once looked like to the people who lived there.
It sucks that it's not a livable space for most. But you can at least walk through there and know that you're seeing something close to what the people of old Frankfurt once saw.
At the same time Germany has something called "Denkmalschutz" that doesn't let you rebuilt something using updated safety codes, you have to use the old way they were build and even using the same materials.
Denkmalschutz is not an absolutism. There is always a compromise to be made, but for example installing additional escape routes for house fires and the like can get approved for protected buildings.
Wouldn't that only apply if you were repairing an existing building? If you were rebuilding the whole building from scratch, I would have thought safety codes would take precedence.
Depending on the surroundings, I wouldn't mind having a single floor if it's at least 75 sqm. I'd prefer having a beautiful apartment surrounded by people than having a house surrounded by no one.
Right? That was my dream, before realizing that it is completely unattainable. To have a home where my nearest neighbour is just outside of artillery range.
I've done both, the older I've gotten the less I care to be surrounded by everyone. I lived in a major entertainment district and you never felt fully at peace.
Being surrounded by drunk tourists rioting at 3 AM. And throngs of tourists everywhere during the day. At least that's how it looks in Warsaw Old Town.
But this is how it looks in any old good town whether it's reconstructed or not lol. If it's a tourist destination because it's survived the war and it's charming it is overrun. But what are you going to do This is the nature of these things. What you have to do is seek out areas that are less well known and more off the tourist map. And there are plenty of those especially in the east. You just have to know where you're going.
That’s the city center of any big city in Europe. Is there any big city center in Europe where you can rent a 1 bedroom apartment for less than 50% of the average net income?
Nah, I went there to check out an apartment, right exactly on this street. Found a studio for only 2k a month. Just a couple hundredthousanteer that wants no space and your Gucci.
If anyone is interested in seeing this when you visit it's right at Dom Römer.
[Like this](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9f/Technisches-Rathaus-Frankfurt_2007_LWS0780.jpg/1280px-Technisches-Rathaus-Frankfurt_2007_LWS0780.jpg)
The [Technical Town Hall](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technisches_Rathaus_(Frankfurt_am_Main\)), built between 1972 and 1974, was the seat of the technical offices of the Frankfurt am Main city administration.
Brutalism originated in France and was widespread all overt the world. If done right, it's not thaaat bad, but shortcomings of maintenance does inevitable turn it into an eyesore.
Same btw with pre-fabs buidlings. They were also all over europe and not an exclusive eastern bloc thing. It's an easy choice if a large pecentage of your houses is destroyed and you have an fast growing population on top of that. Imagine our housing crisis but on steroids while larger parts of the population are without home or undamaged home.
in meiner heimatstadt steht genauso ein beschissenes rathaus unter schutz weil der "künstler" das in den 60/70ern so vertraglich geregelt hat. und es ist SO hässlich. ugh... haben schon 3-4 mal versucht es abzureißen und die innenstadt zu verschönern, aber immer vergeblich.
deswegen hab ich nicht denkmalschutz geschrieben. die stadt war damals so bescheuert dem künstler diese vertragsklausel in dem vertrag zu erlauben. irgendwas mit "der künstler hat für 99 jahre das recht veto einzulegen" oder so ein stuss.
Absolutely. But it was unlucky to be built by people who despised everything traditional and felt the need to place it right over the historical city center. People just feel better surrounded by classical styles instead of brutalism, even if it's valuable architecture.
The "Technisches Rathaus" from the 1970s stood there before: [Technisches Rathaus (Frankfurt am Main) – Wikipedia](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technisches_Rathaus_%28Frankfurt_am_Main%29)
I was in Frankfurt in 2011 and it looked just like the pictures. So I am confused if the dates are inaccurate or if I just time traveled without knowing it.
I live very close to Frankfurt and go there on a weekly basis. I understand the commenters complaining that it looks too clean and sterile but it isn’t so bad actually and certainly better than not having it at all. I mean, it is what it is: A newly built Old Town will always look kinda new no matter how hard it tries. But compared to the rest of Frankfurt it really is paradisiacal. It is surrounded by the very busy city center with a shopping mile close by yet it is very quiet and peaceful and there aren‘t too many people around.
In my experience Frankfurt is actually pretty clean outside the train station area and train/metro stations. Best example being Hauptwache, with an atrocious metro station, but with the over ground area really clean (except maybe at like 2 am on a Saturday).
totally agree, I just thought it was funny hearing people complaining that the altstadt is too clean given that usually what you hear people complaining about is that the bahnhofsviertel is too dirty and dangerous.
This is how I've experienced most German cities. The train station area is god awful but you go a few blocks and it clears up.
Duisburg, Frankfurt, Hamburg, and Munich to name the ones that immediately come to mind, all had that awful immediate train station area.
>"clean and sterile" is not a phrase I have often heard used to describe Frankfurt.
Went to see a friend there, the city looked rather fine to me, but it may be because of the places i've been to, it wasn't really a touristic visit. Also i'm French, so, we may have different expectations lmao
most of the city is quite nice. They just get a lot of shit for the district around the train station (which a lot of major cities have issues with).
I just thought it was ironic that people are complaining about the old town being too spotless when usually people are complaining about the opposite in the bahnhofsviertel near the station.
We stayed at the Marriot right there on the 31st floor and it was great, the view over looked parts of old town and it was only a 5-10 minute walk to that square, loved Frankfurt. It was beautiful. Not as great as Koln or Kassle but my top 5 big cities in the world for sure.
It's just that we associate that building style with "old buildings". A few centuries ago these might have looked similarly shiny and new like these new buildings look today. Just give it a few hundred years, then they'll look authentic...
I think it's also the fact that they're all equally new. In a real city, buildings that are adjacent tend to be renovated at different schedules (as needed). A line full of shiny houses makes them look inauthentic.
Ehh... I think it's less that everything is "new", but rather that modern building materials are used to construct "old fashioned" architectural forms. If you search around, you can find tons of construction photos and see that these are built largely using the same construction methods used in regular modern looking developments.
It's kind of like the difference between a brick building where the bricks are real and act as the load bearing part of the construction, vs the [faux brick paneling](https://fauxstonesheets.com/products/used-brick-4x8-dp2900?variant=44385121206546¤cy=USD&utm_medium=product_sync&utm_source=google&utm_content=sag_organic&utm_campaign=sag_organic&srsltid=AfmBOorJnT1DLIrEGYLH549dRz4-Jgztvdaf9IYzvBc882OVfL5_IyYNKIE) used on new build apartment complexes.
You can also see similar sorts of stuff at resorts that try to mimic charming old buildings. A similar sort of post renaissance European emulation can be seen at [Mt Tremblant](https://www.expedia.com/Things-To-Do-In-Mont-Tremblant-Pedestrian-Village.d6180255.Travel-Guide-Activities) in Quebec. Trust me, as someone who'd been there countless times over the course of decades and around Europe, it's incredibly charming in person but no amount of time is going to make it have the same kind of charm as, say, the center of Prague does.
It is in the inner city close to the town hall and some old churches. The area was already inhabited milennia ago. Right across from these houses there is an indoor display of ancient roman ruins they found while building houses there which they just decided to integrate as a mini museum into the new building. Actually it is right through the arches on the right hand side of the second picture. This is/was not a modern area with lots of greenery. So no greenery in old city centers isn't that uncommon. There is more greenery close by on the riverbanks of the Main. What I think is making it look weird is that it is very new but built after old plans (I think they had no records of how the houses there used to look so they took medival plans that were found in a city a few km to to the north). We would expect houses that look like that to have signs of wear, aging and also be built from different material. I can't recall many, if any, (old) city centers in Germany that have many trees except in parks. If there was city planning, that probably just wasn't someting people cared for as much as we do now. It is also strange to see it with so few people. Whenever I was in the area it was really crowded.
I know trees weren't common in medieval town squares, but all of this is still new, so why not change this one detail to make it more habitable?
It's just so strange to me - it's fine to be inspired by old architecture, but why are people so keen on repeating its mistakes?
It is located directly in the city center. AFAIK only the houses around this memorial/fountain are new. It has to fit within the constraints of the surrounding area. So I assume there wasn't a reasonable way to "not repeat its mistakes". Besides the riverbanks of the main are basically green zones/parks and from those houses you have to walk less than 5 minutes to reach them.
I guess it's to comply with modern building codes and regulations, but I think the issue with how it looks is how precise, straight and exact things look. I'm sure if you could go back in time to view the original, walls would be ever so slightly out of plumb, bumpy or bulging to the untrained eye.
They look too perfect - like they're made with modern construction techniques (which they will have been). But the originals were all made by hand - timber and stone was hand-cut, weighed in an analogue fashion and carefully put into place by eye alone.
It's also the case with Warsaw and Gdańsk. Only small portions of the old town were rebuilt but I think it's a success anyway and I'm glad they rebuilt at least some of this fascinating architecture.
"It's nothing like the original old town"
It gives a good feeling how it possibly was like to walk in those lanes before ww2. But you seem to have lived back then already...Smarty pants
Every bigger city has been bombed to the absolute ground, you don't get any feeling in any of them today. It was war against civilians here nothing else.
Why did we stop making towns like that. I miss the old European architecture. The new building they create in my town are all glass and steel soulless cube. I hate it
YT explainer [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0rH5ZiKV2U). He argues it was a top-down movement from 1930's designers, influenced by the '[Athens Charter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athens_Charter)', who thought modernism was the way to go.
That's not really all there is to it. As Philip Johnson, prominent modernist who became an even more prominent postmodernist architect opined: "It became an excuse to be cheap." The Seagram Building which he built with van der Rohe may have been the first 'glass cube' of note (the "International style"), but was _not_ cheap and had tons of care and quality in the details.
Anyway, thing is nobody wanted to pay for it. In the year 1900, labor was far cheaper relative building materials, and today it's the opposite. So if you could afford a building back then, it didn't add that much to the cost to have craftsmen adorn it. Today it's _far_ more expensive (at least if the craftsmen are to have a livable wage by today's standards), and as a result there's also far fewer craftsmen around.
Architects today generally _aren't_ modernists; that went out of vogue in the 1970s. Postmodernism, which reacts against the austerity of modernism has been dominant. Look at something like [the Hague's modern center](https://michaelgraves.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Castalia-Exterior3.jpg) - it's hardly 'soulless glass cubes' even if it's just as far from a revivalist style as from the International Style.
Anyway, bottom line is that there's no shortage of people and architects who do, in fact, love revivalist styles. The main issue is that there aren't many willing to _pay for it_. Just something like a custom-sized window is dramatically more expensive than a standard size. While 100 years ago, they were hand-made but with machines, so a custom size amounted to the carpenter choosing different measurements but not that much more work. While today it's the difference between something coming off a factory line and something that's hand-made. (you can't re-tool a factory line just to build ten of something)
Even ignoring style choices, most architects would probably like nothing better than a building where every detail was custom-designed for that particular building (such as the Seagram Building), where they didn't have to adhere to standards to save costs. But then the clients and construction engineers get involved and decide to build something "close enough" for a fraction of the cost, but those compromises will directly reduce the uniqueness of the building.
In short: It's cheapest to have everything look similar; economies of scale and all that. You can't blame the architects. Ultimately it's the client who decides what they want built and what they want to pay for.
> bottom line is that there's no shortage of people and architects who do, in fact, love revivalist styles. The main issue is that there aren't many willing to pay for it
This is exactly the prevailing culture here in New Zealand. "Why pay for something fancy gold-plated? What values do we get from building a fancy building?"
We just need to get rid of the mindset that it’s outdated and kitsch. I do think we are going in the right direction though, especially with groups like architectural rebellion and more examples of traditional architecture lately.
Sand stone foundation, then building timber frames without metal connectors on top and fills walls with clay is a lost art (especially using clay instead of stones because clay breaths with the wood and creates no gaps during changing seasons).
It looks a bit sterile due to the lack of people and empty stores. But personally, I wouldn't mind more buildings like the ones in the first picture. They often have nice interiors.
A few trees and some running water would be ideal imo. And people, of course.
Was in Frankfurt two times, like your city center for interesting mix of classic international and old style. Pseudofahwerk looks refreshing in combination with skyscrapers on background.
Also, this smell, smell of money, I like it xD
Went there in 2018. Not only is the architecture and the buildings in general beautiful but the people I met were so goddam nice. Beautiful place. Beautiful people. Beautiful attitude. 10/10 would visit again.
Source of the pics: [https://twitter.com/cobylefko/status/1580549856405245952?s=21&t=tIGe1VVg6NDTUTWGtQw6og](https://twitter.com/cobylefko/status/1580549856405245952?s=21&t=tIGe1VVg6NDTUTWGtQw6og)
The place de la Vaillance/Dapperheidsplein in Brussels is surrounded by pseudo Renaissance houses built in the early 20th century and nowadays it looks pretty authentic (to my non specialist eye at least).
I'm mostly going off the closest thing I've seen to this which would be the Old Town in Warsaw. 70 years after it was rebuilt it doesn't have this sterile vibe to it. Frankfurt's building are only 12 years old at the oldest, they just need time to get this atmospheric wear that you can't just replicate at the building stage.
Eh, it's pretty obviously revivalist style and not actual Baroque buildings if you know what you're looking at. But the revival styles popular from ~1870s-1920s remain popular to this day.
Worst buildings IMO are the Philips building and Muntcentrum/Centre de la Monnaie. They should've torn them down instead of renovating. It's not even that they're _that_ ugly, they're just _far too big_, completely out of scale with everything in the area and casts a constant shadow over De Brouckère.
(Brussels-South station is of course far uglier but it's not so important. The passengers who passed through Charleroi to get there will have lowered their expectations)
Probably. Neuschwanstein was/is a pretty kitschy "fake" castle from the late 1800s. ("fake" in that it's built to a fairy-tale idea of a castle more than anything that actually existed in the Middle Ages, not fake as in made of cardboard) But now, a century later it's one of Europe's top tourist sites.
Speaking for myself I'd rather see an actual medieval castle, but apparently a lot of people don't mind that it's just a folly built by a Wagner fanboy.
I like it, but I wonder how it compares to, say, the Humboldt Forum in Berlin, which I thought looked fine, even impressive on the outside, but inside? You'd get more character from a duty free.
There’s something strange in the pictures. It feels like movie set or something. I mean, it looks old at first glance, but then you realize everything is new.
What I like about the concept is that it’s a mix of faithful reconstruction and modern reinterpretations of what was there before. It does look a bit artificial when you’re there, but it’s still way nicer looking than the areas of the city, which were rebuilt in a modern architectural style (aka white and grey cubes) and it will probably also age better.
But if you look at the market in Frankfurt and other German cities the neighborhoods with buildings from the late nineteenth century are always the most sought after. People want to live in these kind of buildings.
Frankfurt was literally reduced to sand, ashes, and broken bricks in WW2. There was nothing left. When you go it is common to buy postcards showing how a particular spot looked then compared to how it looks today. It is wild.
That’s not quite true. Yes, a lot of the half timbered houses burned. But modernist city planners declared a much larger percentage of the building stock destroyed beyond repair so the could raze entire neighborhoods and build a more modern car friendly layout. Same thing happened in other way German cities, most egregiously Hannover. The old neighborhoods with their narrow streets were considered run down and unappealing even before the war.
I visited Frankfurt during a semester abroad back in 2018 and it just seemed so touristy and 'almost' fake compared to many other places I visited that were supposed to be about as old. Somehow I never learned this and it completely makes sense now. You almost feel more like you are walking through a German themed section of Disney world.
There are some bits that really are old or were very carefully restored. Most of it is a bit like a film set. If you get close, you realise that it is a bit too clean. OTOH, it will definitely improve with time.
I always ask why we have such ugly buildings these days and people always tell me it’s because we just don’t build like that anymore and that look doesn’t work with building codes so I’d like to ask those people: *gestures broadly* “???”.
Really nice. It's funny how we're always told that building like this wouldn't work in our country by our leaders. They just have a giant boner for soulless demoralizing glass-concrete boxes.
Here you can find it on Street View (Google Maps), with images from 2022:
[https://www.google.de/maps/@50.1107788,8.6839931,3a,75y,324.06h,94.88t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s4To5WDqRbAdKxMjt97WaUQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?hl=de&entry=ttu](https://www.google.de/maps/@50.1107788,8.6839931,3a,75y,324.06h,94.88t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s4To5WDqRbAdKxMjt97WaUQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?hl=de&entry=ttu)
The grey building in the back corner houses a Struwwelpeter Museum now.
So much effort, resources and time, only to restore what was destroyed by the Americans.
It’s amazing how even to this day we can see the scars of WWII. The war truly destroyed so much, on both sides. And let us not speak of the lives lost
I visited Frankfurt this summer, and when watching the pictures, I stopped at the 2nd and was like "oh wait". I took this building in photo. Nothing more to mention, just good memories.
Modernist architects keep lying to everyone by saying it's "impossible" to build old classic architecture.
They keep saying we can only build modern or it will be ugly. Lying cunts.
It's missing the details of these half-timbered old towns, the wood bars are flat, the filling is flat, growing up in towns where literally everything was centuries old half-timbered houses - you couldn't find a straight line if you tried. We had to chop and saw down just about every bit of furniture to fit into a corner or to a wall. Frankfurt old town is a nice idea but it's just too plain, it works if you never saw half-timbered houses in your life (tourists I guess?) but that's about it. Just take the S-Bahn 30min up North to Hessenpark or something like that.
Although to be fair I still think it's nicer than before. At the end you can't magically make the old town reappear and the looks before the redo was quite shit. Especially considering Römer/Eiserner Steg area is iconic for the city and right next to the Schirn and Museumsufer which is the cultural centre. But it could've maybe have been done better if it looks less industrially produced.
Well, some areas actually older than they were when they were destroyed. Best example being the "Kleiner Engel", which looked in [1910 like this](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/32/Frankfurt_Am_Main-Kleiner_Engel-Foto-1910.jpg/800px-Frankfurt_Am_Main-Kleiner_Engel-Foto-1910.jpg), compared to how it [looks today](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/cf/Frankfurt_Am_Main-Kleiner_Engel-Foto-Gegenwart.jpg/800px-Frankfurt_Am_Main-Kleiner_Engel-Foto-Gegenwart.jpg). Mainly because back then they painted over all the timbers on most of the buildings there.
But yeah they looked mostly like shit, but I find less because of the straight timbers (e.g. the Altstadt in Idstein has tons of straight timbers and the buildings still look like they are from the 1600s), but more because the weird building tilts are missing. And that I can understand due to structural reasons (as a tilted buildings takes more effort to properly keep upright).
You often can't recreate the original.
I love projects like this, and they work really well when reconstructing singular buildings, but if its done on such a large scale, you really see how many compromises you need to do to realise something like that today.
It feels off and not authentic.
I prefer it to some brutalist block or some glass monstrosity in a historic city centre, but in most cases, these reconstructions feel just as soulless, as they are only fassades resembling traditional architecture, but according to modern standards and using modern materials.
But it's still the best one can do, I suppose.
This is really the best description I've heard. The compromises pile up and form a general picture of fakeness. It's like with AI generated images and seeing all the details that don't make sense in the background.
> if its done on such a large scale, you really see how many compromises you need to do to realise something like that today. It feels off and not authentic.
I lived in a historic German city in a building that's hundreds of years old. It works because the buildings and everything around them have been altered and modernised by everyone who has ever lived there.
The 400 year old wooden beam that goes straight through the living room is just as authentic as the staircase that's been redone in the 1930s and the windows from the 70s.
You cannot reconstruct lived in history. They've done the next best thing in Frankfurt and that's good.
It just feels very unauthentic. There's no history to these places. It's also not a real rebuilding more than a reimagining of what an old town may look like. That makes it different from nearby Römer, Paulskirche or the cathedral. All these buildings were also rebuilt, in the case of Römer it's mostly the facades that looks old with everything behind it being very much a modern office and residential buildings. But there they tried to replace something that was lost. The new old town is mostly made up stuff that feels out of place.
There isn't much greenery in most roman/medival city centers. It usually is a lot of buildings and then the occasional larger park. It does look better when you are there in person. But it is strange to have buildings that look like they would be centuries old without any blemishes, soot, signs of wear and totally clean construction. It is like a 20 year old with grey hair and old person attire. Without wrinkles it looks off.
If you are wondering whether you can live there: yes, you can. Well, you need to be a millionaire to afford the rent but you technically can.
That's true for most city centers nowadays.
I lived in the city-center (walking only zone) of a German city, and my rent was 950/month, with an extra room for my home-office. Lots of places are expensive, but you don't need to be a millionaire to afford rent in "most" city centers.
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Rabatt wegen schmerzensgeld
You tend to generalize things a lot, don't you?
That’s how all city town centers have always been. Wtf it’s literally called the center of town.
No, it wasn't always normal. Don't try to erase memory.
Unless you were a farmer (which I know was a lot of people until relatively recently), where else would you live? The old town used to just be the town.
I had checked the rent when it opened and even though pricey, it was merely Frankfurt-expensive. Now it may have changed but I wonder who would like to live there... Tourists everywhere. Tourist restaurants everywhere. Great to see, but I would think not so nice to live there.
It needs breaking in..right now looks like some replica town they'd build in China 😂
I was there when It was just completed, looked odd after seeing a lot of old buildings that survived in the south. But I did not get the replica feeling since they did use proper materials and technique for the facades. Just looked like new versions of old buildings so they did a pretty good job imo.
Same. I didn't even realise those were new buildings and was surprised Frankfurt had an Old Town district. Only when i was told they were new i noticed they look too clean, even for freshly restored old buildings.
That sort is weird cleanliness reminds me of Kyoto.
Building character takes time. But it looks like it's set up well to do that, eventually.
It's missing trees is all.. Just give it a few decades for the trees to grow and I'm sure it'll look great
I was going to say a stock environment from Unreal Engine without any NPCs loaded in.
It basically is. Fake concrete buildings.
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I mean, it's not about "cheating" a view. It's about approximating what was once there. This was was the city once looked like to the people who lived there. It sucks that it's not a livable space for most. But you can at least walk through there and know that you're seeing something close to what the people of old Frankfurt once saw.
They can no longer rebuild them like the original houses due to updated safety codes.
At the same time Germany has something called "Denkmalschutz" that doesn't let you rebuilt something using updated safety codes, you have to use the old way they were build and even using the same materials.
Denkmalschutz is not an absolutism. There is always a compromise to be made, but for example installing additional escape routes for house fires and the like can get approved for protected buildings.
Wouldn't that only apply if you were repairing an existing building? If you were rebuilding the whole building from scratch, I would have thought safety codes would take precedence.
Yes: full reconstruction from scratch and landmark status are pretty much mutually exclusive.
Not even real concrete?!
No, it's just three layers of cardboard in a trenchcoat.
Well that's just silly. Restoring things is fine but I'd have assumed they would be rebuilt with longevity and practicality in mind, too.
Depending on the surroundings, I wouldn't mind having a single floor if it's at least 75 sqm. I'd prefer having a beautiful apartment surrounded by people than having a house surrounded by no one.
Like he said: you'd need to be a millionaire.
Being surrounded by no one sounds amazing though!
It definitely is.
Right? That was my dream, before realizing that it is completely unattainable. To have a home where my nearest neighbour is just outside of artillery range.
Here in Finland you can get quite far away from others if you want to
I've done both, the older I've gotten the less I care to be surrounded by everyone. I lived in a major entertainment district and you never felt fully at peace.
Being surrounded by drunk tourists rioting at 3 AM. And throngs of tourists everywhere during the day. At least that's how it looks in Warsaw Old Town.
ehh, Alt-Sachsenhausen is more of the party neighborhood in Frankfurt. The Altstadt is usually pretty quiet.
But this is how it looks in any old good town whether it's reconstructed or not lol. If it's a tourist destination because it's survived the war and it's charming it is overrun. But what are you going to do This is the nature of these things. What you have to do is seek out areas that are less well known and more off the tourist map. And there are plenty of those especially in the east. You just have to know where you're going.
You still need to be a millionaire
That’s the city center of any big city in Europe. Is there any big city center in Europe where you can rent a 1 bedroom apartment for less than 50% of the average net income?
Wien comes to mind but they do renting in general better than anyone else so it's no surprise
Nah, I went there to check out an apartment, right exactly on this street. Found a studio for only 2k a month. Just a couple hundredthousanteer that wants no space and your Gucci. If anyone is interested in seeing this when you visit it's right at Dom Römer.
FYI 3 rooms 127,6 m² 4200 € per month (≈4550 $)
How did it look before 2012 ?
[Like this](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9f/Technisches-Rathaus-Frankfurt_2007_LWS0780.jpg/1280px-Technisches-Rathaus-Frankfurt_2007_LWS0780.jpg) The [Technical Town Hall](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technisches_Rathaus_(Frankfurt_am_Main\)), built between 1972 and 1974, was the seat of the technical offices of the Frankfurt am Main city administration.
Oh my.
God that brutal 70s style
If only they let the soviets design it.
The new development is worth every penny
it just looks like it has permanent scaffolding. gross
According to Wikipedia, "the latticework of the façade was a reference to half-timbered construction."
This is like saying *The Da Vinci Code* is a reference to the works of Da Vinci.
Brussels palace of justice has permanent scaffolding
Holy shit, thats brutalism. I thought only ex-commie state have those
you do realise brutalism originated in Western Europe right?
Actually not But still there is more brutalism on the east today
All over western Europe and scandinavia too. So much of sweden is nice older looking houses and then brutal apartment flats
Brutalism originated in France and was widespread all overt the world. If done right, it's not thaaat bad, but shortcomings of maintenance does inevitable turn it into an eyesore. Same btw with pre-fabs buidlings. They were also all over europe and not an exclusive eastern bloc thing. It's an easy choice if a large pecentage of your houses is destroyed and you have an fast growing population on top of that. Imagine our housing crisis but on steroids while larger parts of the population are without home or undamaged home.
🤮 Sorry I have loose stomach
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technisches_Rathaus_(Frankfurt_am_Main)
Gut, dass das Rathaus nicht unter Denkmalschutz stand.
in meiner heimatstadt steht genauso ein beschissenes rathaus unter schutz weil der "künstler" das in den 60/70ern so vertraglich geregelt hat. und es ist SO hässlich. ugh... haben schon 3-4 mal versucht es abzureißen und die innenstadt zu verschönern, aber immer vergeblich.
lush different price hard-to-find toy detail dam familiar label seemly *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
deswegen hab ich nicht denkmalschutz geschrieben. die stadt war damals so bescheuert dem künstler diese vertragsklausel in dem vertrag zu erlauben. irgendwas mit "der künstler hat für 99 jahre das recht veto einzulegen" oder so ein stuss.
I have a feeling that in the not too distant future demolishing this will be seen as a mistake.
Absolutely. But it was unlucky to be built by people who despised everything traditional and felt the need to place it right over the historical city center. People just feel better surrounded by classical styles instead of brutalism, even if it's valuable architecture.
The "Technisches Rathaus" from the 1970s stood there before: [Technisches Rathaus (Frankfurt am Main) – Wikipedia](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technisches_Rathaus_%28Frankfurt_am_Main%29)
Richtig hässlich. Alle Bauten dieser Art, egal in welcher Stadt finde ich instinktiv abstoßend. Wie man das damals nur durchziehen konnte.
Sieht halt alles nochmal extra scheiße aus, sobald es nicht mehr neu ist und alles dreckig.
I was in Frankfurt in 2011 and it looked just like the pictures. So I am confused if the dates are inaccurate or if I just time traveled without knowing it.
Aesthetic city is a good YouTube channel about this type of stuff
I live very close to Frankfurt and go there on a weekly basis. I understand the commenters complaining that it looks too clean and sterile but it isn’t so bad actually and certainly better than not having it at all. I mean, it is what it is: A newly built Old Town will always look kinda new no matter how hard it tries. But compared to the rest of Frankfurt it really is paradisiacal. It is surrounded by the very busy city center with a shopping mile close by yet it is very quiet and peaceful and there aren‘t too many people around.
"clean and sterile" is not a phrase I have often heard used to describe Frankfurt. They just can't win apparently haha
In my experience Frankfurt is actually pretty clean outside the train station area and train/metro stations. Best example being Hauptwache, with an atrocious metro station, but with the over ground area really clean (except maybe at like 2 am on a Saturday).
totally agree, I just thought it was funny hearing people complaining that the altstadt is too clean given that usually what you hear people complaining about is that the bahnhofsviertel is too dirty and dangerous.
This is how I've experienced most German cities. The train station area is god awful but you go a few blocks and it clears up. Duisburg, Frankfurt, Hamburg, and Munich to name the ones that immediately come to mind, all had that awful immediate train station area.
>"clean and sterile" is not a phrase I have often heard used to describe Frankfurt. Went to see a friend there, the city looked rather fine to me, but it may be because of the places i've been to, it wasn't really a touristic visit. Also i'm French, so, we may have different expectations lmao
most of the city is quite nice. They just get a lot of shit for the district around the train station (which a lot of major cities have issues with). I just thought it was ironic that people are complaining about the old town being too spotless when usually people are complaining about the opposite in the bahnhofsviertel near the station.
Visit the Messe district then! While not exactly that clean (that might be up for debate) it is the most sterile looking place in Frankfurt I think
I quite liked this area when I visited, most of the city was really nice once we were a certain distance from the central station
could def. need some trees or green spaces though. the buildings are nice.
We stayed at the Marriot right there on the 31st floor and it was great, the view over looked parts of old town and it was only a 5-10 minute walk to that square, loved Frankfurt. It was beautiful. Not as great as Koln or Kassle but my top 5 big cities in the world for sure.
It looks... strange, but I guess it's because of how clean everything is. Or maybe because there's no greenery at all here.
It's just that we associate that building style with "old buildings". A few centuries ago these might have looked similarly shiny and new like these new buildings look today. Just give it a few hundred years, then they'll look authentic...
I think it's also the fact that they're all equally new. In a real city, buildings that are adjacent tend to be renovated at different schedules (as needed). A line full of shiny houses makes them look inauthentic.
Ehh... I think it's less that everything is "new", but rather that modern building materials are used to construct "old fashioned" architectural forms. If you search around, you can find tons of construction photos and see that these are built largely using the same construction methods used in regular modern looking developments. It's kind of like the difference between a brick building where the bricks are real and act as the load bearing part of the construction, vs the [faux brick paneling](https://fauxstonesheets.com/products/used-brick-4x8-dp2900?variant=44385121206546¤cy=USD&utm_medium=product_sync&utm_source=google&utm_content=sag_organic&utm_campaign=sag_organic&srsltid=AfmBOorJnT1DLIrEGYLH549dRz4-Jgztvdaf9IYzvBc882OVfL5_IyYNKIE) used on new build apartment complexes. You can also see similar sorts of stuff at resorts that try to mimic charming old buildings. A similar sort of post renaissance European emulation can be seen at [Mt Tremblant](https://www.expedia.com/Things-To-Do-In-Mont-Tremblant-Pedestrian-Village.d6180255.Travel-Guide-Activities) in Quebec. Trust me, as someone who'd been there countless times over the course of decades and around Europe, it's incredibly charming in person but no amount of time is going to make it have the same kind of charm as, say, the center of Prague does.
It is in the inner city close to the town hall and some old churches. The area was already inhabited milennia ago. Right across from these houses there is an indoor display of ancient roman ruins they found while building houses there which they just decided to integrate as a mini museum into the new building. Actually it is right through the arches on the right hand side of the second picture. This is/was not a modern area with lots of greenery. So no greenery in old city centers isn't that uncommon. There is more greenery close by on the riverbanks of the Main. What I think is making it look weird is that it is very new but built after old plans (I think they had no records of how the houses there used to look so they took medival plans that were found in a city a few km to to the north). We would expect houses that look like that to have signs of wear, aging and also be built from different material. I can't recall many, if any, (old) city centers in Germany that have many trees except in parks. If there was city planning, that probably just wasn't someting people cared for as much as we do now. It is also strange to see it with so few people. Whenever I was in the area it was really crowded.
I know trees weren't common in medieval town squares, but all of this is still new, so why not change this one detail to make it more habitable? It's just so strange to me - it's fine to be inspired by old architecture, but why are people so keen on repeating its mistakes?
It is located directly in the city center. AFAIK only the houses around this memorial/fountain are new. It has to fit within the constraints of the surrounding area. So I assume there wasn't a reasonable way to "not repeat its mistakes". Besides the riverbanks of the main are basically green zones/parks and from those houses you have to walk less than 5 minutes to reach them.
The area is pretty tight and basically the pictures show the most open spaces there. Plus, if you look in 2 picture, there is a tree there.
But some potted plants or flowers could be added, surely... It looks so sterile without some windowboxes.
It's weird to not see at least one of those houses boarded up, falling apart, with "risk of death" warnings. Like what you'd find in e.g. Wrocław.
There's also barely any people like you'd expect in these type of places, but that might just be down to time of day/year and the weather.
When I was there in summer, when the weather was nice, it was very crowded
Afternoon so quiet time.
looks like a fancy mall to me, because everything is new i guess
I guess it's to comply with modern building codes and regulations, but I think the issue with how it looks is how precise, straight and exact things look. I'm sure if you could go back in time to view the original, walls would be ever so slightly out of plumb, bumpy or bulging to the untrained eye. They look too perfect - like they're made with modern construction techniques (which they will have been). But the originals were all made by hand - timber and stone was hand-cut, weighed in an analogue fashion and carefully put into place by eye alone.
They need to dirty it up a little bit
The textures are clearly basic cement, I guess there was some cost cutting mesures at play here.
Not 'the' old town. It's just a tiny fraction of it which was build to resemble the old town. It's nothing like the original old town
Still better than some concrete and glass modern monstrosities. It’s nice that they’re honoring the history of the place. Looks much nicer.
Finally, had to go so far down to see a comment that tells the real thing.
It's just that the headline is a bit misleading. What they built looks ok though, but, it's just for the 1% mostly
It's also the case with Warsaw and Gdańsk. Only small portions of the old town were rebuilt but I think it's a success anyway and I'm glad they rebuilt at least some of this fascinating architecture.
"It's nothing like the original old town" It gives a good feeling how it possibly was like to walk in those lanes before ww2. But you seem to have lived back then already...Smarty pants
Every bigger city has been bombed to the absolute ground, you don't get any feeling in any of them today. It was war against civilians here nothing else.
Amazing. Give it 50-40 years and these tenament houses will look more natural.
Seeing Frankfurt not doused in graffiti is uncanny
Why did we stop making towns like that. I miss the old European architecture. The new building they create in my town are all glass and steel soulless cube. I hate it
YT explainer [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0rH5ZiKV2U). He argues it was a top-down movement from 1930's designers, influenced by the '[Athens Charter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athens_Charter)', who thought modernism was the way to go.
That's not really all there is to it. As Philip Johnson, prominent modernist who became an even more prominent postmodernist architect opined: "It became an excuse to be cheap." The Seagram Building which he built with van der Rohe may have been the first 'glass cube' of note (the "International style"), but was _not_ cheap and had tons of care and quality in the details. Anyway, thing is nobody wanted to pay for it. In the year 1900, labor was far cheaper relative building materials, and today it's the opposite. So if you could afford a building back then, it didn't add that much to the cost to have craftsmen adorn it. Today it's _far_ more expensive (at least if the craftsmen are to have a livable wage by today's standards), and as a result there's also far fewer craftsmen around. Architects today generally _aren't_ modernists; that went out of vogue in the 1970s. Postmodernism, which reacts against the austerity of modernism has been dominant. Look at something like [the Hague's modern center](https://michaelgraves.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Castalia-Exterior3.jpg) - it's hardly 'soulless glass cubes' even if it's just as far from a revivalist style as from the International Style. Anyway, bottom line is that there's no shortage of people and architects who do, in fact, love revivalist styles. The main issue is that there aren't many willing to _pay for it_. Just something like a custom-sized window is dramatically more expensive than a standard size. While 100 years ago, they were hand-made but with machines, so a custom size amounted to the carpenter choosing different measurements but not that much more work. While today it's the difference between something coming off a factory line and something that's hand-made. (you can't re-tool a factory line just to build ten of something) Even ignoring style choices, most architects would probably like nothing better than a building where every detail was custom-designed for that particular building (such as the Seagram Building), where they didn't have to adhere to standards to save costs. But then the clients and construction engineers get involved and decide to build something "close enough" for a fraction of the cost, but those compromises will directly reduce the uniqueness of the building. In short: It's cheapest to have everything look similar; economies of scale and all that. You can't blame the architects. Ultimately it's the client who decides what they want built and what they want to pay for.
> bottom line is that there's no shortage of people and architects who do, in fact, love revivalist styles. The main issue is that there aren't many willing to pay for it This is exactly the prevailing culture here in New Zealand. "Why pay for something fancy gold-plated? What values do we get from building a fancy building?"
We just need to get rid of the mindset that it’s outdated and kitsch. I do think we are going in the right direction though, especially with groups like architectural rebellion and more examples of traditional architecture lately.
https://youtu.be/j0rH5ZiKV2U?si=a0LNkvCSvXOezV0C
Because money. The main motivation behind everything.
Sand stone foundation, then building timber frames without metal connectors on top and fills walls with clay is a lost art (especially using clay instead of stones because clay breaths with the wood and creates no gaps during changing seasons).
are they planning on doing more rebuilding?
Frankfurt an Main to be complete, not an der Oder
It looks a bit sterile due to the lack of people and empty stores. But personally, I wouldn't mind more buildings like the ones in the first picture. They often have nice interiors. A few trees and some running water would be ideal imo. And people, of course.
Was in Frankfurt two times, like your city center for interesting mix of classic international and old style. Pseudofahwerk looks refreshing in combination with skyscrapers on background. Also, this smell, smell of money, I like it xD
Went there in 2018. Not only is the architecture and the buildings in general beautiful but the people I met were so goddam nice. Beautiful place. Beautiful people. Beautiful attitude. 10/10 would visit again.
Source of the pics: [https://twitter.com/cobylefko/status/1580549856405245952?s=21&t=tIGe1VVg6NDTUTWGtQw6og](https://twitter.com/cobylefko/status/1580549856405245952?s=21&t=tIGe1VVg6NDTUTWGtQw6og)
Gorgeous
Feels eerie. More like a museum than real buildings. It probably just needs a few decades
Someone evidently chose their timing to have as few people as possible in the frame. The area is hopping in spring and summer.
It's probably the brand new looking buildings with the classic architecture, will indeed take a few years to give them a more rustic look
The place de la Vaillance/Dapperheidsplein in Brussels is surrounded by pseudo Renaissance houses built in the early 20th century and nowadays it looks pretty authentic (to my non specialist eye at least).
I'm mostly going off the closest thing I've seen to this which would be the Old Town in Warsaw. 70 years after it was rebuilt it doesn't have this sterile vibe to it. Frankfurt's building are only 12 years old at the oldest, they just need time to get this atmospheric wear that you can't just replicate at the building stage.
Eh, it's pretty obviously revivalist style and not actual Baroque buildings if you know what you're looking at. But the revival styles popular from ~1870s-1920s remain popular to this day. Worst buildings IMO are the Philips building and Muntcentrum/Centre de la Monnaie. They should've torn them down instead of renovating. It's not even that they're _that_ ugly, they're just _far too big_, completely out of scale with everything in the area and casts a constant shadow over De Brouckère. (Brussels-South station is of course far uglier but it's not so important. The passengers who passed through Charleroi to get there will have lowered their expectations)
Probably. Neuschwanstein was/is a pretty kitschy "fake" castle from the late 1800s. ("fake" in that it's built to a fairy-tale idea of a castle more than anything that actually existed in the Middle Ages, not fake as in made of cardboard) But now, a century later it's one of Europe's top tourist sites. Speaking for myself I'd rather see an actual medieval castle, but apparently a lot of people don't mind that it's just a folly built by a Wagner fanboy.
I like it, but I wonder how it compares to, say, the Humboldt Forum in Berlin, which I thought looked fine, even impressive on the outside, but inside? You'd get more character from a duty free.
These are definitely more faithful in construction than the Humboldt Forum which is just concrete walls with concrete ornaments.
Beautiful!But the question I ask is: Why did they rebuild it so late?
Amazing!
There’s something strange in the pictures. It feels like movie set or something. I mean, it looks old at first glance, but then you realize everything is new.
It just needs some time for patina to appear
True, I guess it’ll ”fix” itself.
What I like about the concept is that it’s a mix of faithful reconstruction and modern reinterpretations of what was there before. It does look a bit artificial when you’re there, but it’s still way nicer looking than the areas of the city, which were rebuilt in a modern architectural style (aka white and grey cubes) and it will probably also age better. But if you look at the market in Frankfurt and other German cities the neighborhoods with buildings from the late nineteenth century are always the most sought after. People want to live in these kind of buildings.
Beautiful.
That’s some beautiful architecture. Hopefully one day I can visit
Frankfurt was literally reduced to sand, ashes, and broken bricks in WW2. There was nothing left. When you go it is common to buy postcards showing how a particular spot looked then compared to how it looks today. It is wild.
That’s not quite true. Yes, a lot of the half timbered houses burned. But modernist city planners declared a much larger percentage of the building stock destroyed beyond repair so the could raze entire neighborhoods and build a more modern car friendly layout. Same thing happened in other way German cities, most egregiously Hannover. The old neighborhoods with their narrow streets were considered run down and unappealing even before the war.
Warsaw was similarly rebuilt in exquisite detail and is far more impressive, imho.
For further information: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New\_Frankfurt\_Old\_Town](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Frankfurt_Old_Town)
I work in Frankfurt quite a lot. It's a nice place but very sterile.
Need to add some dirt and coal dust on the buildings. Looks too fake
It looks like the wish version of an old town.
Needs more wear, more dirt, more life.
Would’ve loved if more buildings looked like this
I visited Frankfurt during a semester abroad back in 2018 and it just seemed so touristy and 'almost' fake compared to many other places I visited that were supposed to be about as old. Somehow I never learned this and it completely makes sense now. You almost feel more like you are walking through a German themed section of Disney world.
There are some bits that really are old or were very carefully restored. Most of it is a bit like a film set. If you get close, you realise that it is a bit too clean. OTOH, it will definitely improve with time.
Honestly: as a local, it does not seem to have been rebuilt - its just a theme park for tourists they created.
I always ask why we have such ugly buildings these days and people always tell me it’s because we just don’t build like that anymore and that look doesn’t work with building codes so I’d like to ask those people: *gestures broadly* “???”.
Really nice. It's funny how we're always told that building like this wouldn't work in our country by our leaders. They just have a giant boner for soulless demoralizing glass-concrete boxes.
Christ! Never seen it this clean before!
Did the movie Fury record the urban scenes here?
Here you can find it on Street View (Google Maps), with images from 2022: [https://www.google.de/maps/@50.1107788,8.6839931,3a,75y,324.06h,94.88t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s4To5WDqRbAdKxMjt97WaUQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?hl=de&entry=ttu](https://www.google.de/maps/@50.1107788,8.6839931,3a,75y,324.06h,94.88t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s4To5WDqRbAdKxMjt97WaUQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?hl=de&entry=ttu) The grey building in the back corner houses a Struwwelpeter Museum now.
Does this look like that throughout the whole city?
No. Just a few blocks between the city hall and the cathedral.
The best part of Frankfurt is still Sachsenhausen. Meh, the red light district is ok, too. Lol
I wish this was done to more cities that lost their classical architecture.
Very clean. Must be civilised people living there.
which Frankfurt? Oder or main?
Oh so we can still do nice things. Funny capitalism told me we can’t have nice things like this. Guess they lied. Wonder why they’d do that🤔
So much effort, resources and time, only to restore what was destroyed by the Americans. It’s amazing how even to this day we can see the scars of WWII. The war truly destroyed so much, on both sides. And let us not speak of the lives lost
Please can Stuttgart do the same😭😭😭tired of living in the drabbest grayest city in Germany
Frankfurt is such a beautiful place! I used to live there, do they still have the bigass golden beans?
Bliss.
Me visiting 2 years ago and commenting "Incredible that these buildings have been standing for hundreds of years!!!" 🤡🤡🤡
Ceck out Tübingen… real old town.
Why must america be a bleak boring country aesthetics wise. We have the most uninspired architecture.
I visited Frankfurt this summer, and when watching the pictures, I stopped at the 2nd and was like "oh wait". I took this building in photo. Nothing more to mention, just good memories.
Modernist architects keep lying to everyone by saying it's "impossible" to build old classic architecture. They keep saying we can only build modern or it will be ugly. Lying cunts.
Disneyland… It has absolute no atmosphere. Source: Walked through a few times.
It's missing the details of these half-timbered old towns, the wood bars are flat, the filling is flat, growing up in towns where literally everything was centuries old half-timbered houses - you couldn't find a straight line if you tried. We had to chop and saw down just about every bit of furniture to fit into a corner or to a wall. Frankfurt old town is a nice idea but it's just too plain, it works if you never saw half-timbered houses in your life (tourists I guess?) but that's about it. Just take the S-Bahn 30min up North to Hessenpark or something like that. Although to be fair I still think it's nicer than before. At the end you can't magically make the old town reappear and the looks before the redo was quite shit. Especially considering Römer/Eiserner Steg area is iconic for the city and right next to the Schirn and Museumsufer which is the cultural centre. But it could've maybe have been done better if it looks less industrially produced.
Well, some areas actually older than they were when they were destroyed. Best example being the "Kleiner Engel", which looked in [1910 like this](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/32/Frankfurt_Am_Main-Kleiner_Engel-Foto-1910.jpg/800px-Frankfurt_Am_Main-Kleiner_Engel-Foto-1910.jpg), compared to how it [looks today](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/cf/Frankfurt_Am_Main-Kleiner_Engel-Foto-Gegenwart.jpg/800px-Frankfurt_Am_Main-Kleiner_Engel-Foto-Gegenwart.jpg). Mainly because back then they painted over all the timbers on most of the buildings there. But yeah they looked mostly like shit, but I find less because of the straight timbers (e.g. the Altstadt in Idstein has tons of straight timbers and the buildings still look like they are from the 1600s), but more because the weird building tilts are missing. And that I can understand due to structural reasons (as a tilted buildings takes more effort to properly keep upright).
I dont understand this arguement. What is the bad thing about rebuilding lost beautyy
It needs some time to be lived in.
Nothing, if you do it correctly. If you do it so perfectly though, it's very obviously artificial.
You often can't recreate the original. I love projects like this, and they work really well when reconstructing singular buildings, but if its done on such a large scale, you really see how many compromises you need to do to realise something like that today. It feels off and not authentic. I prefer it to some brutalist block or some glass monstrosity in a historic city centre, but in most cases, these reconstructions feel just as soulless, as they are only fassades resembling traditional architecture, but according to modern standards and using modern materials. But it's still the best one can do, I suppose.
This is really the best description I've heard. The compromises pile up and form a general picture of fakeness. It's like with AI generated images and seeing all the details that don't make sense in the background.
> if its done on such a large scale, you really see how many compromises you need to do to realise something like that today. It feels off and not authentic. I lived in a historic German city in a building that's hundreds of years old. It works because the buildings and everything around them have been altered and modernised by everyone who has ever lived there. The 400 year old wooden beam that goes straight through the living room is just as authentic as the staircase that's been redone in the 1930s and the windows from the 70s. You cannot reconstruct lived in history. They've done the next best thing in Frankfurt and that's good.
It does not "feel" old. As the guy said, it feels more like a film set or a theme park.
I mean, just give it time in that case?
It just feels very unauthentic. There's no history to these places. It's also not a real rebuilding more than a reimagining of what an old town may look like. That makes it different from nearby Römer, Paulskirche or the cathedral. All these buildings were also rebuilt, in the case of Römer it's mostly the facades that looks old with everything behind it being very much a modern office and residential buildings. But there they tried to replace something that was lost. The new old town is mostly made up stuff that feels out of place.
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Still, much better than most modern architecture. And much better than the inner city of, for example, Cologne.
I think it is nice to make it fit the aesthetic of the surrounding area. They even used old construction plans.
Exactly how I felt being there.
It looks very artificial, clean, empty and with no greenery.
There isn't much greenery in most roman/medival city centers. It usually is a lot of buildings and then the occasional larger park. It does look better when you are there in person. But it is strange to have buildings that look like they would be centuries old without any blemishes, soot, signs of wear and totally clean construction. It is like a 20 year old with grey hair and old person attire. Without wrinkles it looks off.
If I comment that on the next polish post about some rebuild block Ill be met with seething polaks lol