Frankfurt – Around the old opera

The famous old opera house (Alte Oper) was built in 1880 by the architect Richard Lucae and the building was one of the major opera houses in Germany until it was heavily damaged in World War II. Until the late 1970s it was a ruin, with the nickname: “Germany’s Most Beautiful Ruin”. The public pressure resulted in a fully reconstructed and reopened Opera in 1981. The inscription on the frieze says: “Dem Wahren, Schönen, Guten” (“To the true, the beautiful, the good”).