Haus Wertheym

Haus Wertheym stands in Frankfurt’s old town as a Renaissance half-timbered house built around 1600. Its ground floor carries seven red sandstone arcades along the eastern façade facing the Fahrtor. Two richly decorated upper floors project over the arcades beneath a fully slated roof with later dormer windows.

The open ground floor and vaulted cellars probably stored and traded goods during Frankfurt’s spring and autumn fairs. From the seventeenth through the nineteenth century, the building served as a customs house and guardhouse for the city guard. Its exposed timber frame emerged during a renovation in the 1920s, after earlier plaster or slate coverings concealed it. Air raids destroyed much of the old town in 1944, while a firefighter-built water curtain protected this house from the flames.

Haus Wertheym became a protected monument in 1963, and its last recorded renovation followed in 1964. Foot bands, crossed diamonds, fire bucks and circles form the visible patterns across its timber framework. Connections to buildings along the Middle Rhine, including Bacharach’s Alte Haus, appear in the construction. The building is wheelchair accessible and remains one of Frankfurt’s rare surviving original half-timbered houses.