Wikipedia
The Altstadt (old town) is a city district of Frankfurt am Main, Germany. It is part of the Ortsbezirk Innenstadt I.
The Altstadt is located on the northern Main river bank. It is completely surrounded by the Innenstadt district, Frankfurt's present-day city centre. On the opposite side of the Main is the district of Sachsenhausen.
As the historical center of Frankfurt, the Altstadt has existed from Frankfurt's beginnings, dating back to 794 (first mentioning of Frankfurt). It used to be part of the original Innenstadt area, which lay inside of the city walls, the Staufenmauer. Only very small sections of the Altstadt were rebuilt after World War II and so only a few old buildings are actually preserved. The Altstadt contains many of Frankfurt's most important sights, including the Römerberg plaza with the famed Römer city hall and many other middle-age style buildings which are mostly actually reconstructions. Nearby is the St. Bartholomäus Cathedral and the Paulskirche, the short-lived seat of the German National Assembly in 1848-49.
The Dom-Römer Project is a current reconstruction project for the old town quarter between the Römer square and the Frankfurt Cathedral.
The Altstadt (literally "old town") is one of the 49 boroughs of Düsseldorf, Germany; it belongs to central City District 1. The Düsseldorfer Altstadt is known as "the longest bar in the world" (längste Theke der Welt), because the small Old Town has more than 300 bars and discothèques; supposedly, each establishment's bar-counter connecting to one next door.
Famous is the special beer from Düsseldorf, the Altbier ("old beer"), brewed from an old traditional recipe, which is only brewed in a few places in the world since the end of the 19th century.
The Old Town has an area of half a square kilometer (which is less than a quarter of a percent of the whole city) and has 2297 inhabitants (2000), less than half a percent of the population of Düsseldorf. The density of population is thus 4594 inh./km².
Altstadt is the German language word for " old town", meaning "historical city centre within the city wall", in contrast to younger suburbs outside. Neustadt (new town), the logical opposite of "Altstadt", mostly stands for a part of the "Altstadt" in modern sense, sometimes only a few years younger than the oldest part, sometimes a late medieval enlargement.
Most German towns have an Altstadt, even though the ravages of war have destroyed many of them, especially during the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648). In the " War of the Palatinian Succession" of 1688, the order to Brûlez le Palatinat! was executed by Mélac, devastating many cities and large parts of South Western Germany, like the Heidelberg castle.
Allied Strategic bombing during World War II destroyed nearly all large cities, with Dresden being the most prominent victim. Many smaller towns remained intact, for example Tübingen, Dinkelsbühl, Quedlinburg and Wismar. Some Altstadt parts in Freiburg, Berlin, Münster, Rothenburg ob der Tauber and famously Weimar and others have been restored. But most destroyed bigger German old towns were not reconstructed. Important old towns like those of Hildesheim, Braunschweig, Frankfurt, Kassel and Pforzheim were largely lost or only reconstructed in limited areas.
Recent efforts of Altstadt reconstructions can be found in Dresden ( Neumarkt area), Potsdam (the old market and city palace) and Frankfurt ( Römerberg around the Cathedral).
thumb|Altstadt's marketplace thumb|Coat of arms of Altstadt Altstadt was a quarter of central Königsberg, Germany. During the Middle Ages it was the most powerful of the three towns that composed the city of Königsberg, the others being Löbenicht and Kneiphof. Its territory is now part of Kaliningrad, Russia.
Altstadt ( German for "old town") in the Swiss city of Zürich encompasses the area of the entire historical city before 1893, before the incorporation of what are now districts 2 to 12 into the municipality, over the period 1893 to 1934. Altstadt approximately corresponds to the area enclosed by the former city ramparts, and is today within the administrative area of the city called Kreis 1 (District 1).
With a population of just below 5,600 (as of 2005), it houses about 1.5% of the city's total population.
Administratively, District 1 is divided into four parts or quarters by the Zürich statistical office, Rathaus (town hall), Hochschulen (universities), Lindenhof ("lime trees courtyard") and City. Lindenhof and Rathaus correspond to the parts of the medieval city left (west) and right (east) of the Limmat, respectively, while City and Hochschulen include the area of the Early Modern city west and east of the medieval walls, respectively.