Easter 2027 falls on March 28, with Good Friday and Easter Monday both public holidays in Hesse. Frankfurt families eat green sauce on Maundy Thursday, then hunt for the eggs the Easter bunny hid. The Dippemess funfair is running, and the zoos and glasshouses make good days out over the school break. Here's what we checked, from a barn egg hunt at the Hessenpark to the Senckenberg dinosaurs.
A colorful spring market inside the Hessenpark, an open-air museum of old Hessian farmhouses and barns rebuilt in the Taunus hills. Families stroll the stalls between half-timbered houses, eat at the museum's restaurants and snack stands, and kids hunt for Easter eggs in a historic barn.
It suits families with kids under 10 best. Teens may find a day of market stalls slow.
Dippemess is Frankfurt's big traditional funfair, held twice a year on the fairground next to the Eissporthalle. Kids ride classic carousels, spinning rides, a roller coaster and the Ferris wheel, which looks out over the city at dusk.
Between rides there's cotton candy, crêpes and candied almonds. It suits kids who love rides and can handle noise, bright lights and evening crowds.
Hessenpark is an open-air museum of more than a hundred old buildings rebuilt here from villages across Hesse: farmhouses, barns, craft workshops, a 15th-century church and a 1950s pub. About a hundred animals from rare old breeds live on the farms, and the museum theater runs tours that show how villagers lived and worked. The half-timbered market square has shops, inns and benches for a break.
Opel-Zoo spreads about 1,700 animals over 27 hectares of hillside between Kronberg and Königstein. Elephants, giraffes, zebras, cheetahs and red pandas live in large open enclosures, and glass panes let kids watch spectacled penguins swim and dive.
In the walk-in petting zoo kids can feed the animals, then head for the adventure playgrounds with a climbing forest, zip line, ball pool and trampoline.
Frankfurt Zoo packs more than 450 species into 11 hectares, from gorillas, bonobos and orangutans in the Borgori Forest ape house to seals, Humboldt penguins, giraffes and okapi outside. The Exotarium has a tropical rainforest pool and leafcutter ants, and the Grzimek House holds small animals like mouse lemurs and bats.
Kids can pet dwarf goats and run off steam on the big sand playground.
A 20-hectare botanical garden in the Westend with around 13,000 plant species. Indoors, kids walk through the 1869 Palm House, the Tropicarium's rainforest and desert glasshouses, a carnivorous plant collection with Venus flytraps, and a butterfly house where pupae hatch in view.
Outside are a large playground with a water play area, a shaded playground above the pond, rental boats in summer and a mini golf course.
A natural history museum built around a dinosaur hall, where a Tyrannosaurus, a Triceratops and a long-necked Diplodocus stand over the floor. Other galleries cover whales and elephants, the deep sea, coral reefs, insects, and 47-million-year-old fossils from the nearby Messel Pit.
In the Aha?! Science Lab, kids handle more than 100 natural objects, look at them under microscopes and help sort samples for real research projects.
Easter 2027 falls on March 28, with Good Friday and Easter Monday both public holidays in Hesse. Frankfurt families eat green sauce on Maundy Thursday, then hunt for the eggs the Easter bunny hid. The Dippemess funfair is running, and the zoos and glasshouses make good days out over the school break. Here's what we checked, from a barn egg hunt at the Hessenpark to the Senckenberg dinosaurs.
A colorful spring market inside the Hessenpark, an open-air museum of old Hessian farmhouses and barns rebuilt in the Taunus hills. Families stroll the stalls between half-timbered houses, eat at the museum's restaurants and snack stands, and kids hunt for Easter eggs in a historic barn.
It suits families with kids under 10 best. Teens may find a day of market stalls slow.
Dippemess is Frankfurt's big traditional funfair, held twice a year on the fairground next to the Eissporthalle. Kids ride classic carousels, spinning rides, a roller coaster and the Ferris wheel, which looks out over the city at dusk.
Between rides there's cotton candy, crêpes and candied almonds. It suits kids who love rides and can handle noise, bright lights and evening crowds.
Hessenpark is an open-air museum of more than a hundred old buildings rebuilt here from villages across Hesse: farmhouses, barns, craft workshops, a 15th-century church and a 1950s pub. About a hundred animals from rare old breeds live on the farms, and the museum theater runs tours that show how villagers lived and worked. The half-timbered market square has shops, inns and benches for a break.
Opel-Zoo spreads about 1,700 animals over 27 hectares of hillside between Kronberg and Königstein. Elephants, giraffes, zebras, cheetahs and red pandas live in large open enclosures, and glass panes let kids watch spectacled penguins swim and dive.
In the walk-in petting zoo kids can feed the animals, then head for the adventure playgrounds with a climbing forest, zip line, ball pool and trampoline.
Frankfurt Zoo packs more than 450 species into 11 hectares, from gorillas, bonobos and orangutans in the Borgori Forest ape house to seals, Humboldt penguins, giraffes and okapi outside. The Exotarium has a tropical rainforest pool and leafcutter ants, and the Grzimek House holds small animals like mouse lemurs and bats.
Kids can pet dwarf goats and run off steam on the big sand playground.
A 20-hectare botanical garden in the Westend with around 13,000 plant species. Indoors, kids walk through the 1869 Palm House, the Tropicarium's rainforest and desert glasshouses, a carnivorous plant collection with Venus flytraps, and a butterfly house where pupae hatch in view.
Outside are a large playground with a water play area, a shaded playground above the pond, rental boats in summer and a mini golf course.
A natural history museum built around a dinosaur hall, where a Tyrannosaurus, a Triceratops and a long-necked Diplodocus stand over the floor. Other galleries cover whales and elephants, the deep sea, coral reefs, insects, and 47-million-year-old fossils from the nearby Messel Pit.
In the Aha?! Science Lab, kids handle more than 100 natural objects, look at them under microscopes and help sort samples for real research projects.
