Friedrichstadt is easy to recognise on a map. Many streets meet at right angles, as though someone had continued Düsseldorf's centre with a ruler. The regular grid does indeed belong to the city's expansion of 1854. What began as a layout on paper now provides the framework for a densely built neighbourhood south of the centre. Its interest emerges where that framework makes room for something else: a larger public space, a conspicuous building, or a history that cannot be read from straight lines alone.
Fürstenplatz is one such space. Play facilities, a ball court and table tennis sit between the surrounding buildings, with a public book exchange adding another everyday use. Rather than functioning primarily as a conventional sight, the square allows different activities to share a piece of the city. A straight street generally encourages movement onwards; the square offers reasons to stay. Exchanging books and playing ball belong to its character as much as the buildings around its edges.
Nearby stands St. Antonius. Designed by Wilhelm and Paul Sültenfuß, the church was built between 1905 and 1909 after population growth created the need for another Catholic church. Its Romanesque Revival architecture therefore belongs to a neighbourhood that had already grown well beyond the first lines of the plan. Church and square create two distinct interruptions in the surrounding blocks: one draws the eye to a substantial building, while the other spreads activity across open space.
A straight plan, not a straightforward history
The church tower shows that the present is not simply a continuation of the original design. St. Antonius was badly damaged during the Second World War and subsequently rebuilt, but its tall, pointed spire was not restored. Its altered outline brings two periods into view at once. The building speaks both of the city's earlier growth and of decisions made during reconstruction, without the entire street having to change its appearance.
The neighbourhood's earlier uses are equally difficult to infer from its grid. In the nineteenth century, Friedrichstadt was associated with senior civil servants, earning it the nickname Tintenviertel, or ink district. That suggests files and offices, but tells only part of the story. Entertainment and theatre belonged here too; the Apollo, opened in 1899, was one of its stages. There was considerable room between the orderly drawing on the map and what happened in the streets. The coexistence of officials' homes and variety theatre is not merely a curious exception. It is a reminder of how little a right-angled junction reveals about the life behind it.
Sources and data
Checked and accessed: 2026-10-17. Sources: the municipal district history, the history of St. Antonius, Fürstenplatz on the cultural portal and the official Fürstenplatz location page.