Frankfurt's citizens financed the Alte Oper, and the Berlin architect Richard Lucae designed it. Philipp Holzmann was the main contractor. Construction began in 1873, and it opened on October 20, 1880, with Mozart's Don Giovanni. Kaiser Wilhelm I attended. The article calls the style Neo-Renaissance. The planned cost of 2 million marks rose to a multiple of that figure.
Bombing largely destroyed the building in 1944. In the 1960s the city planned to demolish the ruin for an office building. A citizens' initiative raised reconstruction funds after 1953. Helmut Braun and Martin Schlockermann rebuilt it as a concert hall from 1976 to 1981, and it reopened on August 28, 1981, with Mahler's Symphony No. 8.
The Großer Saal seats 2,500 and the Mozart-Saal seats 700.
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