The Nizza in Frankfurt am Main

By 1921 Max Beckmann had been living in Frankfurt for about six years, and this is a corner of that adopted city: the Nizza, a public garden that runs along the north bank of the river Main. Frankfurt borrowed the name from Nice, on the French Riviera, because a sheltered south-facing slope, high promenade walls that block the wind, and sunlight thrown back off the water make it one of the warmest spots in Germany. Gardeners planted it with palms, cypresses, stone pines and even banana trees, a piece of the Mediterranean set down in a defeated postwar Germany that was already sliding toward the great inflation. Beckmann painted the place his neighbours strolled through on a Sunday. The garden is still there today, replanted with the same southern trees.