Staufer Period

The museum includes original parts of buildings from the Staufer era. Around 1200, the Stauferbau was built in the east of the Saalhof as a two-storey residential wing with a hall-like room on the upper floor and an 18-metre-high three-storey residential tower facing the Main. The collector's museum is integrated here today. A model of the residential tower and the "Palas" (palace) from around 1200 invites visitors to explore the Staufer building.

During the reign of the Hohenstaufen King Philip of Swabia, a chapel was built on the east side of the tower from 1200. In its basement, the building itself is now the most important exhibit: visitors walk along a walkway through the excavated walls, fountains and canals, enter the treasury and discover the crown, sceptre and orb - replicas of the original coronation regalia from the early 20th century. A true-to-scale model of the city with buildings and city walls simulates Frankfurt in the Staufer era.

Following a spectacular archaeological find in June 2012, a Staufer wharf, the "Stauferhafen", can also be visited in the museum. During the construction work for the HMF quarter, the excavators came across a well-preserved paved path, which turned out to be a quay of the Saalhof, which had been built at the same time as the Staufer building. In the course of the relocation of the town wall at this point, this quay had been filled in in the middle of the 14th century. The HMF has thus preserved a unique testimony to the life of Frankfurt's Staufer city. On the north façade of the old building, guests in the Sonnemann Hall can step outside through the double doors and view the quay.