Frankfurt is a metropolis and the largest city in the German state of Hesse. Its 753,056 inhabitants make it the fifth-largest city in Germany. On the River Main, it forms a continuous conurbation with the neighbouring city of Offenbach am Main and near Bonn city which takes about 1 hour, 54 minutes to drive and also its urban area has a population of 2.3 million. The city is at the centre of the larger Rhine-Main Metropolitan Region, which has a population of 5.5 million and is Germany's second-largest metropolitan region after the Rhine-Ruhr Region. Between the 2013 enlargement of the European Union and the United Kingdom's withdrawal in 2020, the geographic centre of the EU was about 40 km to the east of Frankfurt's central business district. Like France and Franconia, the city is named after the Franks. Frankfurt is the largest city in the Rhine Franconian dialect area.

Frankfurt was a city-state, the Free City of Frankfurt, for nearly five centuries and was one of the most important cities of the Holy Roman Empire, as a site of imperial coronations; it lost its sovereignty upon the collapse of the empire in 1806, regained it in 1815 and then permanently in 1866 when it was annexed by the Kingdom of Prussia. Frankfurt is culturally, ethnically and religiously diverse, with half of its population, and a majority of young people, having a migration background. A quarter of the population consists of foreign nationals, including many expatriates.

Frankfurt is an alpha world city and a global hub for commerce, culture, education, tourism and transportation. It is the site of many global and European corporate headquarters. Frankfurt Airport is among the world's busiest. Frankfurt is the major financial centre of the European continent, with the headquarters of the European Central Bank, Deutsche Bundesbank, Frankfurt Stock Exchange, Deutsche Bank, DZ Bank, KfW, Commerzbank, several cloud and fintech startups and other institutes. Major fairs include the Frankfurt Motor Show, the world's largest motor show, the Music Fair and the Frankfurt Book Fair, the world's largest book fair.

Frankfurt is home to influential educational institutions, including the Goethe University, the UAS, the FUMPA and graduate schools like the Frankfurt School of Finance & Management. Its renowned cultural venues include the concert hall Alte Oper, Europe's largest English theatre and many museums. Frankfurt's skyline is shaped by some of Europe's tallest skyscrapers. The city is also characterised by various green areas and parks, including the central Wallanlagen, the City Forest, two major botanical gardens and the Frankfurt Zoo. In electronic music, Frankfurt has been a pioneering city since the 1980s, with renowned DJs including Sven Väth, Marc Trauner, Scot Project, Kai Tracid, and the clubs Dorian Gray, U60311, Omen and Cocoon.

Frankfurt's startup landscape has continued to grow in 2024, with several key players making significant strides. Some of the top-funded startups include ngena, which provides international network services through a Software-Defined Network platform and has raised over $393 million, and Enviria, offering scalable energy solutions, with total funding exceeding $465 million. Additionally, Clark, a platform for managing health and insurance needs, has secured $577 million, showcasing the growth in the Fintech and Energy sectors.

Other notable startups include Cloudflight.io, which provides digital transformation services, and paydirekt, a collaborative online payment method developed by German banks. The diversity in industries, from energy to fintech and digital services, highlights Frankfurt's potential as an innovation hub, often referred to as the "Silicon Valley of Europe" due to its thriving tech sector.
 

• The famous writer, humanist and scientist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was born in Frankfurt in 1749. In 1860, it also became the final resting place of the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer
   
• Frankfurt has the largest inner-city forest in Germany, taking up around 80 sq. km. (a third of its territory), and the world-famous 20-hectare Palm Garden, which hosts plants from every climate zone on the planet.
   
• This city is home to two of the EU’s highest skyscrapers – the Commerzbank (259 m) and the tower of the Exhibition Centre
  Frankfurt’s airport is the largest in Germany. It is the third largest in Europe in terms of the number of passengers flown, and the second in terms of transported cargo
   
• Phillipp Reis invented the first 'make and break telephone' in Frankfurt. It is a common misconception that Alexander Graham Bell or Thomas Edison came up with the idea, but Reis' work predates theirs 
   
• The city’s name comes from Emperor Charlemagne, who referred to the settlement as “Franconovud”, or “Ford of the Franks”, in 794 when he built himself a royal council there
   

Frankfurt is one of five independent district-free cities (kreisfreie Städte) in Hesse, which means that it does not form part of another general-purpose local government entity, in this case, it is not part of a Landkreis. The other four cities are the second to fifth largest cities in Hesse: Wiesbaden, Kassel, Darmstadt and Offenbach am Main. A kreisfreie Stadt has territorial sovereignty within its defined city limits. In 1995 Petra Roth of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) became Lord Mayor (Oberbürgermeisterin), Frankfurt's municipal leader. In 2012, Peter Feldmann (SPD) succeeded Roth as Lord Mayor. The CDU and the Alliance '90/The Greens (Bündnis '90/Die Grünen) formed the government.

The European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA) is an institution of the European Union and part of the European System of Financial Supervisors that was created in response to the financial crisis of 2007–2008. It was established on 1 January 2011. Frankfurt is one of two locations of the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (Bundesanstalt für Finanzdienstleistungsaufsicht, short: BaFin). The BaFin is an independent federal institution and acts as Germany's financial regulatory authority. Frankfurt is home to the German office of the International Finance Corporation (IFC), which is part of the World Bank Group. The IFC promotes sustainable private-sector investment in developing countries. Frankfurt is one of two sites of the German National Library (Deutsche Nationalbibliothek), the other being Leipzig. The Deutsche National Bibliothek is the largest universal library in Germany. Its task, unique in Germany, is to collect, permanently archive, comprehensively document and record bibliographically all German and German-language publications from 1913 on, foreign publications about Germany, translations of German works and the works of German-speaking emigrants published abroad between 1933 and 1945, and to make them available to the public.
 

Frankfurt is one of the world's most important financial centres and Germany's financial capital, followed by Munich. Frankfurt was ranked 8th at the International Financial Centers Development Index, 8th at the Worldwide Centres of Commerce Index, 9th at the Global Financial Centres Index, 10th at the Global Power City Index, 11th at the Global City Competitiveness Index, 12th at the Innovation Cities Index, 14th at the World City Survey and 23rd at the Global Cities Index.

The city's importance as a financial centre has risen since the eurozone crisis. Indications are the establishment of two institutions of the European System of Financial Supervisors in 2011 and the Single Supervisory Mechanism by which the European Central Bank was to assume responsibility for specific supervisory tasks related to the financial stability of the biggest and most important Eurozone banks. According to an annual study by Cushman & Wakefield, the European Cities Monitor, Frankfurt has been one of the top three cities for international companies in Europe, after London and Paris, since the survey started in 1990. It is the only German city considered to be an alpha world city as listed by the Loughborough University group's 2010 inventory, which was a promotion from the group's 2008 inventory when it was ranked as an alpha minus world city.

With over 922 jobs per 1,000 inhabitants, Frankfurt has the highest concentration of jobs in Germany. On work days and Saturdays one million people commute from all over the Rhein-Main-Area. The city is expected to benefit from international banks relocating jobs from London to Frankfurt as a result of Brexit to retain access to the EU market. Thus far, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup Inc., Standard Chartered Plc and Nomura Holdings Inc. announced they would move their EU headquarters to Frankfurt.

The city can be accessed from around the world via Frankfurt Airport located 12 km southwest of the city centre. The airport has four runways and serves 265 non-stop destinations. Run by transport company Fraport it ranks among the world's busiest airports by passenger traffic and is the busiest airport by cargo traffic in Europe. The airport also serves as a hub for Condor and as the main hub for German flag carrier Lufthansa. It is the busiest airport in Europe in terms of cargo traffic, and the fourth busiest in Europe in terms of passenger traffic behind London Heathrow Airport, Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport and Amsterdam Airport Schiphol. Passenger traffic at Frankfurt Airport in 2018 was 69,510,269 passengers. A third terminal is being constructed. The third terminal will increase the capacity of the airport to over 90 million passengers per year. The airport can be reached by car or bus and has two railway stations, one for regional and one for long-distance traffic. Passenger traffic at Hahn Airport in 2010 was 3.5 million. Frankfurt Egelsbach Airport is a busy general aviation airport located southeast of Frankfurt Airport, near Egelsbach.

Frankfurt is a traffic hub for the German motorway system. The Frankfurter Kreuz is an Autobahn interchange close to the airport, where the Bundesautobahn 3, Cologne to Würzburg, and the Bundesautobahn 5, Basel to Hanover, meet. With approximately 320,000 cars passing through it every day it is Europe's most heavily used interchange. The Bundesautobahn 66 connects Frankfurt with Wiesbaden in the west and Fulda in the east. The Bundesautobahn 661 is mainly a commuter motorway which starts in the south, runs through the eastern part and ends in the north. The Bundesautobahn 648 is a very short motorway in the western part which primarily serves as a fast connection between the A 66 and the Frankfurt Trade Fair. The A5 in the west, the A3 in the south and the A661 in the northeast form a ring road around the inner city districts and define a Low-emission zone, meaning that vehicles have to meet certain emission criteria to enter the zone.

It is located between the Gallus, the Gutleutviertel and the Bahnhofsviertel district, not far away from the trade fair and the financial district. It serves as a major hub for long-distance trains and regional trains as well as for Frankfurt's public transport system. It is a stop for most of ICE's high-speed lines, making it Germany's most important ICE station. ICE Trains to London via the Channel Tunnel were planned for 2013. All Rhine-Main S-Bahn lines, two U-Bahn lines, and several tram and bus lines stop there. Regional and local trains are integrated into the Public transport system Rhein-Main-Verkehrsverbund, the second largest integrated public transport system in the world, after Verkehrsverbund Berlin-Brandenburg. Frankfurt Airport can be accessed by two railway stations: Frankfurt Airport's long-distance station is only for long-distance traffic and connects the airport to the main rail network, with most of the ICE services using the Cologne-Frankfurt high-speed rail line. The long-distance station is located outside the actual airport ground but has a connecting bridge for pedestrians to Terminal 1, concourse B. Frankfurt Airport regional station is for local S-Bahn trains and regional trains. The regional station is located within Terminal 1, concourse B. Frankfurt's third long-distance station is Frankfurt South station Frankfurt Südbahnhof, often abbreviated as Frankfurt, located in Sachsenhausen. It is an important destination for local trains and trams and the terminal stop for four U-Bahn lines and four S-Bahn lines.
Frankfurt's infrastructure is one of the most modern and efficient in the world. The city is well connected by highways, railways and has one of the busiest airports in the world. The Frankfurt Airport is the major hub for Lufthansa and handles over 60 million passengers every year. The city also has a well-developed public transportation system including trams, buses, and the U-Bahn and S-Bahn rapid transit systems. Frankfurt's digital infrastructure is also highly developed, with high-speed broadband and mobile internet widely available.