The 5 Art Museum Main River You Can’t Miss in Frankfurt
Frankfurt keeps most of its art museums on one stretch of riverbank on purpose. The
Museumsufer — the “museum embankment” — runs along Schaumainkai on the Sachsenhausen
side of the Main, a dozen-plus institutions within easy walking distance of each other,
with a handful more just across the water in the old town. We went through every art
museum with a Google Business listing along that stretch and weighted each one’s rating
against how many people actually left it, because a 4.6 from thirteen thousand reviews
and a 4.6 from fifteen hundred are not making the same claim. Five came out clearly
ahead, and between them they cover most of what an art museum on the Main can be: a
seven-century survey collection, a sculpture house in a converted villa, a museum built
around a single comic genius’s estate, a Kunsthalle currently running from a temporary
home, and a design museum built around one famous kitchen.
Städel Museum, Sachsenhausen
Start with the anchor of the whole embankment: Städel
Museum, 4.6★ from 12,921 Google reviews — more than eight times the review
count of anything else on this list. Its own site sums up the pitch in five words: “700
Jahre Kunst unter einem Dach,” seven hundred years of art under one roof, a single
permanent collection running from medieval panels through to work made this decade. The
building carries a rooftop terrace, the Städel Dach, with its own skyline view over the
river, plus a café and garden, and the museum runs its own KI Festival exploring art and
artificial intelligence alongside the historical galleries — a museum that treats its
seven centuries as a starting point rather than the whole story. On Schaumainkai, closed
Mondays, 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM Tuesday through Sunday, until 9:00 PM on Thursdays.
Liebieghaus, Sachsenhausen
A few doors down the same embankment, Liebieghaus matches
the Städel’s 4.6★ on a far smaller base of 1,505 reviews. It occupies the Villa
Liebieg, a historic riverside residence, and its permanent collection runs “vom alten
Ägypten bis zum Klassizismus” — from ancient Egypt to Classicism — across antiquity,
the medieval period and the Renaissance. What makes it more than a period survey is its
own polychromy research: studies into how ancient sculptures, which reach us as bare
stone, were originally painted in colour. The villa’s garden also hosts DJ sets and
cocktail evenings, an unusual second life for a collection this old. Schaumainkai 71,
closed Mondays, noon to 6:00 PM Tuesday and Wednesday, 10:00 AM Thursday through
Sunday, until 9:00 PM on Thursdays.
Caricatura — Museum for Comic Art, Altstadt
The one museum on this list on the opposite bank, in the old town rather than on the
Museumsufer proper. Caricatura is Germany’s museum for comic
and caricature art — rotating special exhibitions on the ground floor and gallery, its
own collection on the first floor, and the Caricatura Salon for shorter shows by
emerging artists. Its biggest recent get: in 2025 the complete artistic estate of Loriot
(Vicco von Bülow), the country’s best-known humorist and cartoonist, came to the museum
as a permanent loan. 4.5★ from 1,527 reviews on Weckmarkt, with a bookshop
carrying more than 400 titles on comic art alone. Closed Mondays, 11:00 AM to 7:00 PM
Tuesday through Sunday.
Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, Bockenheim (temporary home)
Worth a note before visiting: Schirn Kunsthalle normally
sits by the Römerberg in the old town, but its own site currently opens with “Die SCHIRN
ist jetzt in Bockenheim” — the Schirn is now in Bockenheim — while its usual building
is renovated, which is also why the Google listing’s address sits away from the river.
The Schirn has never held a permanent collection; it exists entirely for temporary shows,
running “The World Through AI” and a Leonor Fini retrospective at the time of writing,
alongside a members’ programme (Schirn Freunde) and its own magazine. 4.4★ from
4,338 reviews — the second-highest review count on this list despite the disruption.
Closed Mondays, 10:00 AM to 7:00 PM Tuesday through Sunday, until 10:00 PM on
Thursdays.
Museum of Applied Arts, Sachsenhausen
Known locally as the Museum Angewandte Kunst, and the design-focused counterpart to
the fine-art museums on the same embankment. Museum of Applied
Arts covers design, craft and applied arts — graphic design, fashion, ceramics, plus
a running series on East Asian art traditions — and keeps permanent style rooms devoted
to Dieter Rams and Richard Meier. Its single best-known holding is the Frankfurter Küche,
the original 1920s fitted kitchen design that shaped how kitchens were built across
Europe for the rest of the century, restored and on permanent display. 4.2★ from
1,272 reviews on Schaumainkai, closed Mondays, 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM Tuesday, Thursday,
Friday and Saturday-Sunday, until 8:00 PM on Wednesdays.
All five, on the map
The interactive map has every qualifying art museum we
found along the Main — the Museumsufer in Sachsenhausen and the old-town side across the
river — these five marked and numbered, and a button that hands the walking route
between them straight to Google Maps on your phone.
Getting the most out of a museum day along the Main
Three of these five sit close enough on Schaumainkai that they’re a genuine walking
crawl; Caricatura in the old town and the Schirn’s current Bockenheim home both mean a
tram or a longer walk across the river. If you’re visiting rather than living here, a
local eSIM from Airalo means Google Maps and transit
timetables work the moment you land at Frankfurt Airport, and a booked transfer from
Welcome Pickups takes the guesswork out of
getting from FRA into the city in the first place. Museum admission across five venues in
a day adds up, and skip-the-line tickets from Tiqets
cover several of the bigger names here so the day isn’t spent queueing outside the
Städel or the Schirn. Paying euros for tickets and the museum shop without a foreign
transaction fee on every purchase is worth sorting out before you go — a
Wise card is the simplest fix for that.
Frequently Asked Questions
What’s the best art museum in Frankfurt?
By rating weighted against review volume, Städel Museum and Liebieghaus tie at
4.6★, but the Städel’s 12,921 reviews against Liebieghaus’s 1,505 make it the
clearer answer for most visitors — a seven-century survey collection versus a smaller,
more specialised sculpture house.
Which Frankfurt neighbourhood has the most art museums?
Sachsenhausen, specifically the Schaumainkai stretch known as the Museumsufer — three
of the five museums on this list (Städel, Liebieghaus, Museum of Applied Arts) sit on
that one embankment.
Are these museums open on Mondays?
No — all five list Monday as closed in Google’s current data. Every one of them opens
Tuesday through Sunday, with later closing times on at least one weekday each.
Is the Schirn Kunsthalle open at its usual location right now?
Not currently — the Schirn’s own website states it has temporarily relocated to
Bockenheim while its regular building near the Römerberg is renovated, which is also why
its Google listing shows an address away from the river.
Can I book skip-the-line tickets for these museums in advance?
For the larger names on this list — the Städel and the Schirn in particular —
skip-the-line and combination tickets are bookable in advance through services like
Tiqets, which is worth doing before a day covering more than one or two museums.
- 1. Städel Museum — Schaumainkai 63, 60596 Frankfurt am Main
- 2. Liebieghaus — Schaumainkai 71, 60596 Frankfurt am Main-Frankfurt-Süd
- 3. Caricatura — Museum for Comic Art — Weckmarkt 17, 60311 Frankfurt am Main-Innenstadt I
- 4. Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt — Gabriel-Riesser-Weg 3, 60325 Frankfurt am Main
- 5. Museum of Applied Arts — Schaumainkai 17, 60594 Frankfurt am Main-Frankfurt-Süd
