Four days in Cologne: rebuilt in a hurry, and the best company in Germany

The cathedral and a first Kolsch on the arrival evening, Roman Cologne and the Romanesque churches, Picasso and the Gestapo cellar, and one last basilica before the train.

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Length
4 days, 3 nights
Where you stay
Cologne
Places
9 across 4 days
OpenFreeMap © OpenMapTiles Data from OpenStreetMap

Cologne is not a beautiful city and everybody here knows it. The Romans founded it in AD 50, it was the largest city in Germany for most of the Middle Ages, and then the bombing of 1942 to 1945 took nearly all of it. What went back up in the 1950s went up fast and cheap, so the walk between two magnificent churches is often four blocks of concrete.

What survived, or was rebuilt properly, is remarkable: a cathedral that took six centuries, a dozen Romanesque churches from the age when this was one of the richest sees north of the Alps, and Roman streets under the pavement. And the city has something none of its neighbours do, which is a temperament. People talk to strangers in the pubs, the beer comes in small glasses and keeps coming until you stop it, and the carnival is a civic religion.

Three nights covers all of that without hurrying. The centre is small, the museums are clustered around the cathedral, and the whole thing is fifteen minutes wide on foot.

Highlights

  • A Gothic cathedral begun in 1248 and finished in 1880, with a gold reliquary of the Magi behind the altar
  • Five hundred steps up the south tower to the bell chamber
  • A Zumthor museum built over a bombed church, with the ruins left underneath it
  • Gestapo cells with a thousand messages scratched into the plaster
  • Kolsch in 0.2 litre glasses, replaced without asking until you cover the glass

Where to stay

Cologne, three nights

The city sits on the left bank of the Rhine in a half circle, with the cathedral and the station at the top of it and the medieval ring road drawn round the outside. The old town runs south from the cathedral along the river in a narrow strip of rebuilt gabled houses, brewery taps and the town hall.

Stay inside the ring. The streets immediately south and west of the cathedral are central and dull; the Belgian Quarter and the Agnesviertel are twenty minutes out, cheaper, and where the good restaurants have gone. Avoid the blocks directly behind the station at night, which are the usual station blocks.

Day by day

Day 1 in Cologne

The cathedral, the tower and the first Kolsch

You will see the cathedral before you leave the station, which is the correct introduction. Work on it began in 1248, stopped in 1473 with one tower half built and a crane left standing on it for four centuries, and started again in 1842 with the original plans, which had turned up in an attic. It was finished in 1880 and was briefly the tallest building in the world.

Inside, go to the shrine behind the high altar: a gold and enamel reliquary made around 1200 to hold what the archbishop had carried off from Milan in 1164 as the bones of the Three Kings. That relic is the reason the cathedral is this size, because the pilgrims it drew paid for it. Entry to the nave is free.

Then climb the south tower, which is over five hundred steps of spiral staircase with no lift and a bell chamber near the top holding a 24 tonne bell. Come down, walk out onto the railway bridge for the view back at the whole thing, and spend the evening in the old town with a Kolsch in front of you.

  1. 15:00

    Kölner Dom

    Religious

    Begun 1248, finished 1880, and a World Heritage site. The nave is free; pay separately for the tower and the treasury. Go in the morning or after five to avoid the tour groups.

  2. 17:00

    Hohenzollern Bridge

    Architecture

    The railway bridge behind the cathedral, its fencing buried under a wall of padlocks. Walk halfway across for the classic view back at the towers, and watch the trains go past at a rate of one a minute.

  3. 18:30

    Martinsviertel / Altstadt

    Eat

    The rebuilt old town between the cathedral and the river: gabled houses, the brewery taps, and the square where everybody ends up. Twenty minutes to walk, all evening to sit in.

With more time: Eau de Cologne is from here and still made here. An Italian perfumer created the original by the old town hall in 1709 and the house is now a small museum; the famous numbered brand on Glockengasse, a couple of streets away, came along later in the same century.

Day 2 in Cologne

Roman Cologne and two Romanesque churches

The Romans made this the capital of Lower Germany and named it after Agrippina, who was born here and got the colony her name. What is left of that is worth a morning: glass, mosaics, tombstones and the everyday clutter of a garrison town, currently housed near Neumarkt while the museum's own building by the cathedral is rebuilt.

In the afternoon, the churches. Cologne has twelve Romanesque churches inside the ring, an extraordinary concentration built when this was the biggest and richest city in Germany, and almost all of them were wrecked in the war and painstakingly rebuilt afterwards. St Maria im Kapitol is the oldest and largest, laid out in a clover leaf on the site of a Roman temple, with a pair of carved wooden doors from the eleventh century that survived everything.

Finish at Gross St Martin, whose crossing tower is the thing in every photograph of the riverfront and which stands on the foundations of a Roman warehouse on what was once an island. Both churches are free, both close for services, and both are five minutes from a brewery tap.

  1. 10:00

    Römisch-Germanisches Museum

    Culture

    Roman Cologne: glass, jewellery, inscriptions and daily objects from the provincial capital. Now displayed at the Belgian House near Neumarkt, not in its old building by the cathedral.

  2. 12:30

    Lunch around Neumarkt

    Eat

    The streets between Neumarkt and the town hall have the everyday lunch places the office workers use. Cheaper and quicker than anything within sight of the cathedral.

  3. 14:00

    St. Maria im Kapitol

    Religious

    The oldest and biggest of the Romanesque churches, built over a Roman temple with a three-lobed east end copied from Bethlehem. The carved wooden doors of the 1060s are the treasure. Free.

  4. 15:30

    Groß-St. Martin

    Religious

    The tower on the riverfront skyline, founded as a Benedictine abbey around 960 and rebuilt after the war. Free, dark, and worth ten minutes even if churches are not your thing.

With more time: St Gereon, ten minutes north west, is the strangest building in the city: a late Roman oval martyrium with a ten-sided Gothic dome dropped on top of it in the 1220s. The town hall nearby has a fifteenth century tower covered in statues and a Renaissance loggia, and claims to be the oldest working city hall in Germany.

Day 3 in Cologne

Museum Ludwig, Kolumba and the EL-DE house

Museum Ludwig sits in the shadow of the cathedral and holds the collection a chocolate manufacturer and his wife gave the city in 1976: Pop art on a scale you do not expect outside New York, one of the largest groups of Picassos in Europe, and a serious Russian avant-garde holding. Give it a full morning.

Kolumba, ten minutes south, is the opposite kind of museum. Peter Zumthor built it over the ruins of a Gothic church destroyed in the war, wrapping the surviving walls in pale perforated brick so that the excavation, a small post-war chapel and a modern gallery become one building. There are no labels on the walls, the rooms are almost silent, and it is the best piece of architecture in Cologne.

The EL-DE house is another five minutes on. It was the Gestapo headquarters for the region, and the cells in the basement are intact, with more than a thousand inscriptions scratched into the walls by the people held in them. The exhibition upstairs covers the city under National Socialism. It takes about two hours and it is not a light afternoon.

  1. 10:00

    Museum Ludwig

    Culture

    Modern and contemporary art next to the cathedral: Pop art, Picasso, Russian avant-garde and a strong photography collection. Two to three hours, and the cafe is decent.

  2. 13:00

    Lunch off the Neumarkt end

    Eat

    The lanes around Antoniterstrasse have quick lunches between the two museums, and a bakery or two that will do better than the museum cafes.

  3. 14:15

    Kolumba

    Culture

    Zumthor's art museum built over a ruined church, with the excavation left visible below the gallery floor. Quiet, unlabelled and unlike any other museum in the country. An hour.

  4. 15:45

    NS-Dokumentationszentrum

    Historic

    The regional Gestapo headquarters, with the basement cells preserved and the prisoners' writing still on the walls. The largest memorial of its kind in Germany. Two hours, and heavy.

With more time: If the afternoon needs lightening, walk south along the river instead. The old harbour at Rheinauhafen has been rebuilt into a strip of glass warehouses and the chocolate museum sits at the end of it on its own peninsula, with a fountain of tempered chocolate and a good view back at the bridges.

Day 4 in Cologne

A ten-sided dome, and out

One last church, and the oddest of them. St Gereon began as a late Roman burial hall built on an oval plan, which nobody has fully explained, and in the 1220s the medieval builders raised a ten-sided ribbed dome over it, a piece of engineering nothing else in the region came close to. The blue and gold windows are post-war, the crypt is much older, and the whole thing takes half an hour.

It stands ten minutes from the station, so this fits before a midday train. Then leave the way you came in: the Hauptbahnhof is under the cathedral and every fast line in western Germany runs through it.

  1. 09:00

    Breakfast in the Agnesviertel

    Eat

    Ten minutes north of the church, the Agnesviertel is where Cologne has its breakfast: cafes along the main street, none of them aimed at visitors.

  2. 10:00

    St. Gereon's Basilica

    Religious

    A fourth century oval martyrium with a decagonal Gothic dome built over it. Free, quiet, and the strangest church interior in Germany. Closed during services.

With more time: With a later train, the Wallraf-Richartz Museum near the town hall holds the medieval Cologne painters, Rembrandt and a room of Impressionists, and is five minutes from the platform.

Before you go

Getting in

The Hauptbahnhof is 250 metres from the cathedral door, which makes Cologne the easiest arrival in Germany. Fast trains reach Frankfurt in an hour, Brussels in under two, Amsterdam in under three and Paris in three and a quarter. Berlin is about four and a half hours.

Cologne Bonn airport is fifteen minutes away on the S13 and mostly serves budget routes. Dusseldorf airport has the long-haul flights and is about forty minutes by regional train.

Getting around

You will walk. The old town, the cathedral, the museums and the Romanesque churches are all inside the ring of the medieval walls, which is now a road, and nothing inside it is more than twenty five minutes on foot from anything else.

For the rest there is a Stadtbahn that runs underground in the centre and as a tram outside it. Buy a day ticket if you plan on more than two rides; single fares here are steep for the distance covered.

Kolsch, and the rules

Kolsch is a pale top-fermented beer that may only be called that if it is brewed in and around the city, and it is served in a 0.2 litre cylinder called a Stange. The waiter is a Kobes, he carries a wreath of glasses, and he replaces yours as soon as it is empty without being asked, marking your beer mat each time. To stop, put the mat on top of the glass. To settle up, you pay for the strokes on the mat.

The brewery taps in the old town do the whole thing properly, with long shared tables and short-tempered service that is part of the act rather than rudeness. Order Halver Hahn expecting half a chicken and you will get a rye roll with cheese, which is the local joke on visitors and has been for a century.

Carnival, and when not to come

The season opens on 11 November at 11:11 and the week that matters falls before Ash Wednesday, usually in February. From the Thursday to the Tuesday the city stops working, dresses up and drinks in the street, the parade on the Monday takes hours, and every hotel room was booked months ago at three times the price.

It is one of the great European street parties if that is what you came for. If it is not, avoid those six days entirely: museums keep odd hours, restaurants are full and nothing is quiet.

What is open, and what is not

The Roman museum's building beside the cathedral has been closed for a long renovation and its collection is shown at the Belgian House near Neumarkt, a fifteen minute walk away. Some of the largest exhibits, including the tomb monument and the big mosaic, stay behind in the closed building.

The Romanesque churches are working parish churches, so they close for services and several shut over lunch. None charges admission. Check the times on the door before planning a run of three in one afternoon.

Cologne is a city you end up liking for reasons that are hard to photograph. The cathedral is the postcard, but what people remember is a shared table in a brewery tap where somebody started a conversation and the glasses kept arriving.

Leave the evenings alone. The old town looks like a tourist trap and functions as the city's front room, and the difference only becomes clear at about the third Kolsch.

Make it your trip

Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.

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Common questions

Is Cologne worth four days?
Three nights suits it well. Two days covers the cathedral, the old town and one museum; the third buys you the Romanesque churches and the Roman collection without rushing either. Beyond that, Bonn, Aachen and the Rhine valley are all under an hour away.
Can I climb the cathedral tower?
Yes, and it is over five hundred steps with no lift, one narrow spiral in both directions. There is a bell chamber near the top and a viewing platform above it. It closes in high winds and during services, and the queue is shortest first thing.
How do I order Kolsch without getting it wrong?
Sit down, and one will arrive. Each glass is 0.2 litres and the waiter keeps replacing them and marking your mat until you put the mat on top of the glass, which is the signal to stop. Do not order a large beer; there is no such thing.
Is Cologne worth it if I hate churches?
Yes, though it helps to know what you are getting. Museum Ludwig is one of the best modern collections in Europe, the Roman material is first rate, and the EL-DE house is one of the most important twentieth century sites in the country. The cathedral is worth an hour whatever you believe.
What is there to do across the river?
Deutz has the best view of the cathedral, especially at dusk, and a cable car crosses the Rhine further north between the zoo and the park on the eastern bank. Otherwise the left bank has almost everything.
Is Cologne expensive?
Middling for Germany, and cheap for a city this size. Beer is served in small glasses at a small price, the churches are all free, and museum entry runs to the low teens. Hotel prices swing wildly with the trade fair calendar, so check the dates before booking.
Can I copy this itinerary and change it?
Yes. Copy it into a trip of your own and rearrange it, especially day three, which is easy to lighten if two heavy museums in an afternoon is not how you travel.