Rainy afternoon, or legs tired after the Römerberg? The old town and city center hide a few museums that work for kids, all within about a 10-minute walk of each other, so one fits between breakfast and a lunch stop at the Kleinmarkthalle. Under-18s get in free at most of them. Here's what we checked, from the time machine at Junges Museum Frankfurt to the cartoons at the Caricatura.
Frankfurt's city museum of archaeology fills the medieval church of a former Carmelite monastery and traces the region from its first farmers, about 7,500 years ago, to the 20th century.
Standouts include a Celtic prince's grave from the city forest, Roman finds from the town of Nida with reliefs from four Mithras temples, a Roman painter's grave, and objects from ancient Egypt, Greece and Cyprus.
The Caricatura Museum shows cartoons, comic strips and caricatures, built on more than 10,000 original drawings by the Neue Frankfurter Schule, the group behind the satire magazines Pardon and Titanic.
Special exhibitions fill the ground floor and gallery, and the collection on the first floor changes every six months. Many cartoons carry German captions and political satire, so it suits teens more than toddlers.
The Jewish Museum tells the story of Frankfurt's Jews from around 1800 to today, across three floors of the Rothschild Palais, the former home of the banking family. Every floor has hands-on stations and labels written for kids, alongside films, media stations and art.
The last room holds everyday objects, letters and photos from Anne Frank's Frankfurt family. It suits school-age kids with some patience for history more than toddlers.
The city's children's museum sits inside the Historisches Museum by the river. Its current exhibition, Damals 1410, is a walk-through game: kids time-travel to a medieval town, help a builder raise a castle with AI, work as influencers at the smithy and put out a fire, earning badges for skills like spotting fake news.
Orange family-trail stations in the main museum let kids mint a coin or make a cartoon.
A small museum about Der Struwwelpeter, the picture book of cautionary tales, and its author, the Frankfurt doctor Heinrich Hoffmann, set in two houses in the Neue Altstadt.
Kids follow a game trail, roll dice to race Herr Fix around the world in 77 days, pose with giant figures from the book, and dress up to act out the stories on a real stage.
Rainy afternoon, or legs tired after the Römerberg? The old town and city center hide a few museums that work for kids, all within about a 10-minute walk of each other, so one fits between breakfast and a lunch stop at the Kleinmarkthalle. Under-18s get in free at most of them. Here's what we checked, from the time machine at Junges Museum Frankfurt to the cartoons at the Caricatura.
Frankfurt's city museum of archaeology fills the medieval church of a former Carmelite monastery and traces the region from its first farmers, about 7,500 years ago, to the 20th century.
Standouts include a Celtic prince's grave from the city forest, Roman finds from the town of Nida with reliefs from four Mithras temples, a Roman painter's grave, and objects from ancient Egypt, Greece and Cyprus.
The Caricatura Museum shows cartoons, comic strips and caricatures, built on more than 10,000 original drawings by the Neue Frankfurter Schule, the group behind the satire magazines Pardon and Titanic.
Special exhibitions fill the ground floor and gallery, and the collection on the first floor changes every six months. Many cartoons carry German captions and political satire, so it suits teens more than toddlers.
The Jewish Museum tells the story of Frankfurt's Jews from around 1800 to today, across three floors of the Rothschild Palais, the former home of the banking family. Every floor has hands-on stations and labels written for kids, alongside films, media stations and art.
The last room holds everyday objects, letters and photos from Anne Frank's Frankfurt family. It suits school-age kids with some patience for history more than toddlers.
The city's children's museum sits inside the Historisches Museum by the river. Its current exhibition, Damals 1410, is a walk-through game: kids time-travel to a medieval town, help a builder raise a castle with AI, work as influencers at the smithy and put out a fire, earning badges for skills like spotting fake news.
Orange family-trail stations in the main museum let kids mint a coin or make a cartoon.
A small museum about Der Struwwelpeter, the picture book of cautionary tales, and its author, the Frankfurt doctor Heinrich Hoffmann, set in two houses in the Neue Altstadt.
Kids follow a game trail, roll dice to race Herr Fix around the world in 77 days, pose with giant figures from the book, and dress up to act out the stories on a real stage.
