On the cultural trail in Frankfurt

By NICOLA LAMB

Frankfurt is the commercial capital of Germany, the base of the European Bank and the only German city where skyscrapers impose themselves on the landscape.

But commerce has fed the art world with the city notable for its 11 Main River-bank museums encompassing the modern to the ancient, painting to film to sculp-ture.

The Liebieghaus ancient sculpture museum, for example, has a huge collection from Roman, Greek and Egyptian times on religious and mythological themes. It includes portraits on wood of ordinary Egyptians as a kind of death mask to survive the centuries.

The Roman section includes busts of famous figures, such as Marcus Aurelius, and attempts to capture the classical version of beauty: the slim, curved figure with the Elvis lips and sneer.

In the historical town centre, there is only one building that escaped the Second World War unscathed. Others have only the facades remaining or, in the case of the circular Paulskirche, the seat of the first German National Assembly held in 1848, a post-1945 roof tops the foundations. A stretch of buildings off one side of the cobbled square has been built to resemble the old shells of wood and wattle they replaced.

The nearby Dom-St Bartholomans cathedral is again an old relic touched by the war years. From the outside it is an imposing, ornate Gothic eye on the landscape rich in the history of the kaisers. It served as the electoral site for German kings from 1356 onwards, hosting 10 imperial coronation ceremonies between 1562 and 1792. And inside, although there are the Gothic altars, frieze, gravestones and election chapel, it has been extensively renovated with the red stone typical of the area and lacks the atmosphere passed down from ancient days that it would have had before the bombers left their mark.

On the day I visited, a police choir was practising for a charity performance later that day and the bass notes bounced powerfully from the arches.

Closer to the river was an older, late Romanesque "kirche," St Leonhard, with portals and spires, Gothic frescoes and altars.

Aside from the red stone, the other local architectural feature is a creamy brown stone shown to great effect at the Hauptbahnhof railway centre. The centre, with its markets and hot bread shops, shows off the German talent for pastries and cakes.

"Meat, meat and potatoes, potatoes, potatoes" is how my guide described local German cuisine.

A walk near my hotel, along with the railway centre in an "immigrant quarter" of the city, showed Greek, Indian and Asian restaurants on every corner.

It revealed a more colourful side of the town. A huge poster showing only a penis and testicles advertising a film was hard to ignore, near to one warning against paedophilia in foreign lands. Just down the street were sex shops and a store with a selection of knives, guns and ornamental swords in its window. Next to it was a Brando-themed store with Wild One-style leathers.

Three homeless men lay in sleeping bags with a german shepherd for warmth on a freezing Sunday against the front door of a department store. Further along, a man was prone on a wet slab of pavement oblivious to the people stepping around him. Meanwhile, a small platoon of sweepers had the fruitless task of clearing the road in the area of yellowing leaves.

The streets were spotless with stylish curved lamps, big yellow modern tele-phone boxes and green recycling bins. The main shopping area had a mixture of modern buildings and impressive facades.

In the city centre was the Goethe Haus Museum, poet Johann Goethe's parental home which was furnished with 18thcentury period furniture and paintings. They ranged from a heavily ornate Baroque mirror to carmine silk fabrics.

Koln (Cologne) had a Roman museum with a good collection including large mosaics and fine jewellery. At Koln's cathedral you could try climbing the narrow tower to get a view over the city. At 509 steps, it was a tall ask.