Frankfurt central station is the most important rail transport hub in Germany. Every day, more than 1,100 trains connect the city with many national and international destinations and around 700 suburban railway trains take passengers to stations within Frankfurt and the surrounding area. More than 350,000 passengers and visitors from home and abroad use this station every day. To be able to manage this great volume of traffic, the central station has more than 25 platforms in five departure halls.The station was built by the contractor Philipp Holzmann with construction starting in 1883. The Central-Bahnhof Frankfurt was finally opened on 18 August 1888. Right on the evening of the opening day, a train ran over the buffer stop and the locomotive was damaged. Over the course of the next few years, the area to the east of the new station, the Bahnhofsviertel, was built; it was completed around 1900. Until the completion of Leipzig Hauptbahnhof in 1915, Frankfurt station was the largest in Europe. The 24 platforms with 26 tracks on one level probably make it the world's largest one-level railway hall.