The Kaiserhofstraße (lit., "Emperor's Court's Street") (4–19) is a short, mostly

pedestrian A pedestrian is a person traveling on foot, by wheelchair or with other mobility aids. Streets and roads often have a designated footpath for pedestrian traffic, called the '' sidewalk'' in North American English, the ''pavement'' in British En ...

upmarket street in the city centre of

Frankfurt Frankfurt am Main () is the most populous city in the States of Germany, German state of Hesse. Its 773,068 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the List of cities in Germany by population, fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located in the forela ...

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

, located in the Opera Quarter in the western part of the district of Innenstadt, within the

central business district A central business district (CBD) is the Commerce, commercial and business center of a city. It contains commercial space and offices, and in larger cities will often be described as a financial district. Geographically, it often coincides wit ...

known unofficially as the

Bankenviertel Bankenviertel (; ''banking quarter'') is the name of the central business district in Frankfurt, Germany where many banks, insurance companies, and other financial institutions are located. It is the most important German financial hub, if not o ...

(Banking District). The 130 meter long street runs from the

Freßgass Freßgass (Fressgass, ) is an upmarket]shopping street in the city centre of Frankfurt, Germany, located in the district of Innenstadt (Frankfurt am Main), Innenstadt and within the central business district known as the Bankenviertel. It is c ...

pedestrian main street to Hochstraße (Frankfurt), Hochstraße, and is situated between Kleine Hochstraße and

Börsenstraße Börsenstraße (literally, "Stock Exchange Street") is a short side street to the Freßgass and Biebergasse major high-end shopping streets in the city centre of Frankfurt, Germany, in the district of Innenstadt (Frankfurt am Main), Innenstadt a ...

("Stock Exchange Street"). It is located in the immediate vicinity of the Wallanlagen park, which is located just across the street to the north of Kaiserhofstraße, and of the Opera Square with the Old Opera, the

Frankfurt Stock Exchange The Frankfurt Stock Exchange (, former German name: , ''FWB'') is the world's 3rd oldest and 12th largest stock exchange by market capitalization. It has operations from 8:00 am to 10:00 pm ( German time). Organisation Located in Frankfurt, ...

, the Sofitel Frankfurt Opera luxury hotel, and Germany's most well-known luxury shopping street Goethestraße. In recent years Kaiserhofstraße has also increasingly become a luxury shopping street as some stores from Goethestraße have moved to Kaiserhofstraße a minute's walk away. The street is also located in close proximity to numerous large financial institutions. The street is mainly occupied by office spaces, especially for boutique financial institutions such as investment and wealth management firms, select residential apartments, high-end fashion businesses, and four restaurants. The rent in the area surrounding Freßgass is the highest in Frankfurt.

Overview

The Kaiserhofstraße is a

side street A side road is a minor highway typically leading off a main road.Main road — definition

directly adjacent to the

("Eating Street") upmarket shopping street, the western continuation of the

Zeil The Zeil () is a street in the city centre of Frankfurt, Germany. The name, which dates back to the 14th century, is derived from the German word ''wikt:Zeile#German, Zeile'' "row" and originally referred to a row of houses on the eastern end of ...

, Germany's busiest shopping street. Freßgass became so named around 1900 because of its many high-end food shops, bakeries and butcheries, making it the most famous food shopping street serving the

bourgeoisie The bourgeoisie ( , ) are a class of business owners, merchants and wealthy people, in general, which emerged in the Late Middle Ages, originally as a "middle class" between the peasantry and aristocracy. They are traditionally contrasted wi ...

of the

Westend Westend may refer to: * Westend (Trevilians, Virginia), an historic house in Virginia listed on the NRHP * Westend (Berlin), a locality of Berlin in Germany * Westend (Frankfurt am Main), a borough of Frankfurt am Main in Germany * Westend, Espoo, ...

. Today the Freßgass is famous as the street where the bankers from the

meet for lunch, and for its annual

wine Wine is an alcoholic drink made from Fermentation in winemaking, fermented fruit. Yeast in winemaking, Yeast consumes the sugar in the fruit and converts it to ethanol and carbon dioxide, releasing heat in the process. Wine is most often made f ...

festival. The Kaiserhofstraße is, like Freßgass, largely a

pedestrian zone Pedestrian zones (also known as auto-free zones and car-free zones, as pedestrian precincts in British English, and as pedestrian malls in the United States and Australia) are areas of a city or town restricted to use by people on foot or ...

, with

perfume Perfume (, ) is a mixture of fragrance, fragrant essential oils or aroma compounds (fragrances), Fixative (perfumery), fixatives and solvents, usually in liquid form, used to give the human body, animals, food, objects, and living-spaces an agre ...

shops, high end

fashion Fashion is a term used interchangeably to describe the creation of clothing, footwear, Fashion accessory, accessories, cosmetics, and jewellery of different cultural aesthetics and their mix and match into Clothing, outfits that depict distinct ...

boutiques, gourmet restaurants, law chambers, financial institutions such as

wealth management Wealth management (WM) or wealth management advisory (WMA) is an investment advisory service that provides financial management and wealth advisory services to a wide array of clients ranging from affluent to high-net-worth (HNW) and ultra-hi ...

and investment firms, and select residential apartments. The street is situated between and in close proximity to the

Opernplatz The Opernplatz (Opera Square) is a central city square in Frankfurt, Germany, located in the district of Innenstadt (Inner City) and within the central business district known as the Bankenviertel (Banking District). The Opernplatz is the most ...

(with the

Alte Oper Alte Oper (Old Opera) is a concert hall in Frankfurt am Main, Hesse, Germany. It is located in the inner city, Innenstadt, within the banking district Bankenviertel. Today's Alte Oper was built in 1880 as the city's opera house, which was destr ...

concert hall) and the

(both of which are found around the block in opposite directions), and also in close proximity to Goethestraße (on the other side of Freßgass), Germany's most famous luxury shopping street. On the roof of Kaiserhofstraße 12, there is a mediterranean restaurant and bar, the Long Island Summer Lounge. The Frankfurt flagship

Apple Store The Apple Store is a chain of Retail, retail stores owned and operated by Apple Inc. The stores sell, service and repair various Apple products, including Macintosh, Mac desktop and MacBook laptop personal computers, iPhone smartphones, iPad ta ...

is located just around the corner in

, ten meters from Kaiserhofstraße. The Sofitel Frankfurt Opera luxury hotel and the Wallanlagen park are located just across the street to the north of Kaiserhofstraße. In the early 20th century, the street was characterised by its diversity; many artists, actors and actresses employed by the nearby opera, some prostitutes and several Jewish families lived on the street. A rapid process of

gentrification Gentrification is the process whereby the character of a neighborhood changes through the influx of more Wealth, affluent residents (the "gentry") and investment. There is no agreed-upon definition of gentrification. In public discourse, it has ...

took place later during the 20th century, and saw the street become one of the most fashionable streets in the city. An acclaimed memoir, '' Kaiserhofstraße 12'' by Valentin Senger, which was adapted into a motion picture by

Hessischer Rundfunk (; "Hesse Broadcasting"), shortened to HR (; stylized as hr), is the German state of Hesse's public broadcasting corporation. Headquartered in Frankfurt, it is a member of the national consortium of German public broadcasting corporations, A ...

in 1980, is named for the street, and recounts the author's childhood at Kaiserhofstrasse 12 as the son of Russian-Jewish immigrants during the 1920s and 1930s: :The student fraternity Rhenania ..honored our street by moving into No. 19. Real duels were fought on their fencing floor. There was a Greek statue, large enough to attract universal attention, made out of sandstone in a niche at the front of the building. When no one was looking, I could pull myself up on the window ledge, and stand on the iron cellar door and get a glimpse of the students slashing and bloodying each other. But what made our street special were the artists, painters and actors and especially singers, who lived there—the opera house wasn't far away and most of our singers were members of the company. They gave our street a free-and-easy, sometimes almost wicked character. Two rather forbidding establishments, bars that were open only at night, reinforced this atmosphere. You couldn't see what was going on inside because of the thick red plush curtains over the glass doors. For a time one of them was the city's leading homosexual hangout. Even so, Kaiserhofstrasse was a respectable middle-class street, quite acceptable to polite society. In the late 19th century, a local wine cellar owned by Italian-born Giovita Salini (father of the artist ) was a famous meeting place for Frankfurt artists. The

Banque Générale du Luxembourg BGL BNP Paribas (formerly Banque Générale du Luxembourg or BGL) is a Luxembourgish bank founded on 29 September 1919. Since May 2009, the bank has been a subsidiary of the BNP Paribas group. It is the fifth-largest bank in the Grand Duchy of Luxem ...

formerly had its German offices in Kaiserhofstraße 13, while the

private bank Private banks are banks owned by either the individual or a general partner(s) with limited partner(s). Private banks are not incorporated. In any such case, creditors can look to both the "entirety of the bank's assets" as well as the entire ...

of Hauck & Aufhäuser had its offices in Kaiserhofstraße 16. The real estate prices of the area are the highest in Frankfurt; its primary adjacent street Freßgass has the third highest rent in all of Frankfurt, after nearby streets Goethestraße and Zeil. The street is located within the

postcode A postal code (also known locally in various English-speaking countries throughout the world as a postcode, post code, PIN or ZIP Code) is a series of letters or numerical digit, digits or both, sometimes including spaces or punctuation, inclu ...

area 60313 Frankfurt am Main.

Public transport

Kaiserhofstraße is served by the nearby

Frankfurt Hauptwache station Frankfurt (Main) Hauptwache station () is a major train station situated at the Hauptwache square in the centre of Frankfurt, Germany. , with 93,000 passengers per day, Hauptwache station is the third-busiest rapid transit station in Frankfurt ...

(two or three minutes walk down Freßgass to the east) and the

station of the

Frankfurt U-Bahn The Frankfurt U-Bahn is a Stadtbahn ( premetro) system serving Frankfurt, Germany. Together with the Rhine-Main S-Bahn and the tram network, it forms the backbone of the public transport system in Frankfurt. Its name derives from the German te ...

(to the west), which is accessible from the

, a minute's walk around the corner.

Nearby sights with walking distances

*Directly borders

and Hochstraße *10 metres from the Wallanlagen park *10 metres from the Sofitel Frankfurt Opera apartment building and 50 metres (30 seconds) from the main hotel building *10 metres from the Frankfurt

in Freßgass *80 metres (1 minute) from Goethestraße *130 metres (1.5 minutes) from

*130 metres (1.5 minutes) from the

*130 metres (1.5 minutes) from the Rathenauplatz/Goetheplatz *250 metres (3 minutes) from Hauptwache *270 metres (3 minutes) from the

Main Tower Main Tower is a 56-storey, skyscraper in the Innenstadt (Frankfurt am Main), Innenstadt district of Frankfurt, Germany. It is named after the nearby Main (river), Main river. The building is when its antenna tower, antenna spire is included. ...

*350 metres (4 minutes) from the

Commerzbank Tower Commerzbank Tower is a 56-story, skyscraper in the Bankenviertel, banking district of Frankfurt, Germany. An antenna tower, antenna spire with a signal light on top gives the tower a total height of . It is List of tallest buildings in Germany ...

*370 metres (4 minutes) from the Deutsche Bank headquarters *530 metres (6 minutes) from the Eurotower, former seat of, and still used by, the

European Central Bank The European Central Bank (ECB) is the central component of the Eurosystem and the European System of Central Banks (ESCB) as well as one of seven institutions of the European Union. It is one of the world's Big Four (banking)#International ...

*700 metres (8 minutes) from the

Römerberg Römerberg is a municipality in the Rhein-Pfalz-Kreis, in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It is situated on the left bank of the Rhine, approximately southwest of Speyer Speyer (, older spelling ; ; ), historically known in English as Spire ...

Gallery

File:Frankfurt Am Main-Kaiserhofstrasse 5 von Nordosten-20120929.jpg, Kaiserhofstraße 5, at the corner of Freßgass. Built 1875 in the late

Classicist Classics, also classical studies or Ancient Greek and Roman studies, is the study of classical antiquity. In the Western world, ''classics'' traditionally refers to the study of Ancient Greek literature, Ancient Greek and Roman literature and ...

style. The building is under cultural heritage protection. The

in the background. File:Frankfurt Am Main-Kaiserhofstrasse 13 von Nordosten-20120929.jpg, Kaiserhofstraße 13, former offices of the

. Built 1879.

Neo-Renaissance Renaissance Revival architecture (sometimes referred to as "Neo-Renaissance") is a group of 19th-century Revivalism (architecture), architectural revival styles which were neither Greek Revival architecture, Greek Revival nor Gothic Revival ar ...

building in the

Neoclassicist Neoclassicism, also spelled Neo-classicism, emerged as a Western cultural movement in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that drew inspiration from the art and culture of classical antiquity. Neoclassici ...

tradition. The building is under cultural heritage protection. File:Frankfurt Am Main-Kaiserhofstrasse 15 von Nordosten-20120929.jpg, Kaiserhofstraße 15, built 1879.

building in the

tradition. The building is under cultural heritage protection. File:Frankfurt Am Main-Kaiserhofstrasse 19 von Nordosten-20120929 (cropped).jpg, Kaiserhofstraße 19, with the construction year 1878 found over the entrance.

building in the

tradition. Main front with

avant-corps An ''avant-corps'' ( or , plural , , ), a French term literally meaning "fore-body", is a part of a building, such as a porch or pavilion, that juts out from the ''corps de logis'', often taller than other parts of the building.Curl, James Stev ...

and niche. The building is under cultural heritage protection.

References

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kaiserhofstrasse Streets in Frankfurt Shopping districts and streets in Germany Pedestrian streets in Germany Bankenviertel