Jewish Museum Frankfurt

Brief Information

The Jewish Museum Frankfurt is arranged as a museum of two different urban traces. One part is located in the Rothschild Palais on Untermainkai: Villa No. 14 was bought by Mayer Carl von Rothschild in 1846 and became known as the Rothschild Palace. Here, the history and culture of Jewish life are presented from 1800 onward, through a space itself connected with one of Frankfurt’s best-known Jewish families.

The second part is the Museum Judengasse on Battonnstrasse. It did not come into being as an ordinary museum building: during construction work, the foundations of houses from the old Judengasse, the first Jewish ghetto in Europe, were found. That is why the museum is important not only for its collections and documents, but because part of the story literally stands among the restored foundations of the former street.

What to Notice Right Away

It is worth comparing the two types of museum space. The Rothschild Palais is a classic villa on the embankment, where the building itself recalls the urban, family, and cultural history of the 19th century. The Museum Judengasse is arranged differently: its main physical argument is the foundations of five houses, discovered during the construction of an administrative building and restored at basement level. Here, the past is not presented only in display cases; it can be read through the remains of a residential street.

In Judengasse, three adjacencies are especially important: the ruins of the houses, the new administrative building above them, and, nearby, the memorial to the murdered Frankfurt Jews and the old Jewish cemetery. These elements show how one site connects the early modern period, the destruction of the 20th century, and contemporary museum work. The 2016 reconstruction updated the exhibition, but the meaning of the place is defined precisely by the discovered house foundations.