Villa Metzler, Classical villa at Schaumainkai, Frankfurt, Germany

Villa Metzler is a classical three-storey building with five window axes per floor and a pyramid roof with mansard details. It stands on the Schaumainkai in Sachsenhausen, on a plot of about 10,000 square metres that Peter Salzwedel planted with rare trees including ginkgo, Canadian red oak, tulip tree and giant sequoia. The house now holds exhibition rooms of the Museum of Applied Arts.

Peter Salzwedel, owner of the "Zum Weißen Schwanen" pharmacy on the Römerberg, bought a plot outside the Schaumaintor gate on the Sachsenhausen bank in 1800 and built the villa there in 1803. The banker Georg Friedrich Metzler acquired it in 1851, and his family's 77-year ownership gave the house its name. It later became part of the Museum of Applied Arts.

The name comes from the Metzler banking family, who owned the villa for 77 years. Today the building belongs to the Museum of Applied Arts, and its historic rooms display furniture, porcelain and decorative objects from the 18th century onward. Look for the garden trees Peter Salzwedel planted around 1800, among them a ginkgo linked to Goethe's 1815 poem for Marianne von Willemer.

The house is now part of the Museum of Applied Arts, where you can explore historical rooms and decorative arts from different periods. You walk through the original spaces to understand how interiors were designed and furnished in the past.

The square foundation of the villa was used by architect Richard Meier in the 1980s as a model for designing the modern museum extension. This addition was completed in 1987 and creates an intriguing contrast between the historic building and contemporary design.