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Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm were born in Hanau in 1785 and 1786, and the city has worn this fact lightly for most of the time since. A bronze sculpture marks their presence at the station. But Hanau's real character was shaped less by the brothers' fairy tales than by the Huguenots who arrived in 1597 when Count Philipp Ludwig II invited French Protestant refugees fleeing persecution. They established a parallel new town and brought with them goldsmith skills that persist to this day. Hanau still hosts the Deutsches Goldschmiedehaus, Germany's guild of precious metalworkers.

In March 1945 a British air raid created a firestorm that destroyed 98 percent of the old city and roughly 80 percent of Hanau overall.

About 2,500 people died, one sixth of the remaining population. The rebuilt city is neither the original nor simply functional postwar: Schloss Philippsruhe survived the war intact and still stands on the Main River, and Wilhelmsbad, the historic spa quarter, gives you some sense of the grandeur that once ran through this place 25 kilometers east of Frankfurt.