Frankfurt

Frankfurt likes to call itself Mainhattan – skyscrapers stacked along the river Main, the European Central Bank glinting somewhere above the trading floors. Germans have another name for it too: Bankfurt.

But wander three streets over and the skyline drops away into gabled timber houses around the Römerberg – and here's the twist: they're barely older than the towers behind them. Allied bombs flattened the old town in 1944, and it wasn't fully rebuilt, plank by painted plank, until 2018. Frankfurt's oldest quarter is also its newest.

Visitors tend to snap a photo of the Römer's façade, grab a Frankfurter, and catch the next train onward – Frankfurt as a stopover, rarely a destination.

VoiceMap's self-guided audio tours slow that down. Stand where the first German parliament sat in St Paul's Church and hear why it's still called democracy's cradle, then follow the story past Goethe's childhood home and the stock exchange's bronze bull and bear into the Kleinmarkthalle, where Frankfurt actually eats.

Pour an Ebbelwoi, plug in, and let Mainhattan show you its older half.