Frankfurt's past is new. Some of the houses that appear to have survived centuries were completed after the euro entered circulation, because the city chose to reconstruct part of an old town destroyed by wartime bombing. Appearances deceive rather elegantly. Beneath the steep roofs and ornamental facades lies a recent argument about what a city should remember.
Authenticity proved surprisingly negotiable. Between the cathedral and the city hall, the replacement of a postwar administrative complex allowed Frankfurt to recover streets, plots and architectural forms that earlier rebuilding had largely abandoned. The arithmetic reveals the compromise. Of the project's 35 buildings, 15 are historical reconstructions, while 20 are new designs intended to fit their surroundings rather than reproduce lost originals. Not everything is copied. Archival photographs and surviving records informed facade reconstruction, but contemporary building regulations, services and interiors separate these properties from the vanished houses they resemble.
Nostalgia has practical foundations. Restoring narrow routes and small building plots changes how people move through the center, giving the project an urban purpose beyond supplying picturesque backgrounds for visitors' photographs. The objection still bites. Critics regard such reconstruction as a selective version of history, one that risks making destruction and postwar rebuilding less visible; supporters see the recovery of a public place that modern planning had failed to replace satisfactorily. Neither position owns authenticity. Under Frankfurt's apparently ancient eaves, the euro is the older invention, and the question is whether a city inherits its past or builds one it can inhabit.
