Frankfurt's oldest Irish pub held a basement at Wallstrasse 9 in Alt Sachsenhausen until the taps went quiet. This is its record.
An Sibin operated from a basement room at Wallstrasse 9 in Alt Sachsenhausen, and locals long credited it as Frankfurt's oldest Irish pub. The name means the shebeen in Irish, a nod to the unlicensed drinking dens of rural Ireland, and the room played the part with low ceilings, candle stubs, and live sessions in place of television noise.
The pub is permanently closed. Yelp marks the Wallstrasse address as closed, and longtime members of the Toytown Germany expat forum date the shutdown to spring 2008. This page stays live as a record for anyone who searches the name, with pointers to the Frankfurt pubs that carry the torch today across the city's bar scene.
An Sibin no longer trades at Wallstrasse 9. Do not plan a visit. For a working Irish pub tonight, start with O'Reilly's by the Hauptbahnhof or Waxy's near Hauptwache instead.
An Sibin sat below street level on a lane where Alt Sachsenhausen's apfelwein taverns crowd together, and it traded on the contrast. Dark timber, stone walls, and a short bar gave it the feel of a country pub smuggled under a German city block. The Toytown Germany city guide kept its listing as Frankfurt's oldest Irish pub for years, a sign of how firmly the room sat in expat memory.
Guinness anchored the taps, backed by a short Irish whiskey shelf and no cocktail list to speak of. Menu archives on speisekarte.menu file the pub in their lowest price bracket, which matches how regulars remember it: a cheap, honest pint in a part of town that mostly sells apfelwein by the bembel. Nobody came for rarity. They came because the pour was steady and the music was live.
The crowd mixed Irish and British expats with students and whoever wandered down from the Alt Sachsenhausen crawl. Weeknights ran quiet and conversational. Session nights and Thursday karaoke packed the low room well past the point where the ceiling started to sweat.
Lorsbacher Thal keeps the neighborhood's apfelwein tradition alive two streets over.
What to order
- 01
Guinness on draught
- 02
Live trad sessions
- 03
Thursday karaoke
- 04
The shebeen conceit