Every design for Hanau

Meet a friend at the Brüder Grimm-Nationaldenkmal and you are standing at the national monument to Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, in the town where both were born.

Hanau lies about twenty-five kilometres east of Frankfurt, where the Kinzig flows into the Main, and its historic core sits inside a semicircle of the Kinzig. Over time the city spread to the Main itself and, after the boundary reforms of the seventies, across to the south bank for the first time. The railway station is a major junction and there is a port on the Main, so this is a town of commuters and freight as much as fairy tales. Goldsmiths have worked here since the sixteenth century, which is why the Deutsches Goldschmiedehaus is here, and the precious-metal company Heraeus still is. War left little of the old city, but the outer districts kept their charm: the half-timbered streets of Steinheim, Schloss Philippsruhe and the spa gardens of the Kurpark Wilhelmsbad.

And then there is the name, which comes from Hagenowe: a wood and the open land by a river. Look at the map and that is still exactly what you see.