On August 22, 1973, there was finally no more cars on Frankfurt’s Zeil shopping street. The shopping mile was converted into a permanent pedestrian zone exactly 50 years ago – and it stayed that way.
By Simon Rustler
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Video 02:51 mins | 08/22/23, 7:30 p.m. | Hessenschau
The Zeil pedestrian zone turns 50
It is probably the best-known shopping mile in Hesse: the Frankfurt Zeil. And now it has been car-free for 50 years.
Exactly 50 years ago, on August 22, 1973, the Frankfurter Rundschau published the decision with the headline: “Car-free Zeil should remain”.
“The collapse of private transport has not materialized”
The article also makes it clear how controversial the change from a passable street to a complete pedestrian zone was: “The feared collapse of private transport has not materialized,” it says. The car-free shopping street “has been well received by Frankfurters, and the initial skepticism of the department store residents has also disappeared.”
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00:38 Min.
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22.08.23
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Car-free for 50 years – Frankfurt’s Zeil has been a pedestrian zone since 1973
This was preceded by a three-month test run that started on May 9, 1973. The city had investigated whether the car block would overload side streets or whether customers on the Zeil would be absent. According to the report at the time, neither of these things happened. The car-free Zeil thus became a permanent fixture.
August 22, 1973 thus joins the other more or less big milestones of the Zeil: 1799 was the last execution on the Rossmarkt. Around a hundred years later, in 1900, the first department store – the Grand Bazar – came onto the Zeil, which later became the Hansa department store. The Kaufhof opened in 1950 – a symbol of the revival of business after the Second World War, according to the Frankfurter downtown chronicle.
The arson attacks in April 1968, which were later carried out by RAF terrorists, were also remembered. At that time, three fires were set in two department stores, the M. Schneider department store and the Kaufhof department store, in one night.
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Picture gallery 10 pictures
Picture gallery: The Zeil in Frankfurt in pictures
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1/10 The Zeil is one of the most visited shopping streets in Germany. Image © picture-alliance/dpa
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Frankfurt’s Zeil is – after Munich – the most frequented street
The pedestrian zone, which is around 600 meters long, is also particularly well frequented: in the first half of 2023, with 11.8 million passers-by, it was the second most frequented shopping street in Germany. This is shown by an evaluation by the company hystreet.com. Only Kaufingerstraße in Munich with 12.9 million visitors is ahead of the Zeil.
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2023-08-22 23:07:00
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