Cologne Cathedral and Old Town: From a Roman Gate to Your First Kölsch

Welcome to Cologne. Before the cathedral, look at the low stone arch beside you on the west edge of the Domplatte. It is the eastern side passage of the north gate of Roman Cologne, the way in for people on foot. Carts used a central arch 5.6 metres wide, and two square towers flanked a gate about 30 metres across. On the west side of this arch you can see a groove in the stone, where the portcullis of the main passage ran. The town behind this gate became a Roman colony in the year 50. Emperor Claudius granted it at the wish of his wife Agrippina, who was born here, and the name Colonia lives on in the word Köln. The central arch, carved with the letters CCAA, belongs to the Römisch-Germanisches Museum. This side arch was found again in 1892, moved more than once, and now stands a few metres from its original place. Its foundations are in the car park underneath you. Now turn to the twin towers and walk a few steps towards the main doors of the cathedral.

The two towers in front of you are 157 metres high. When they were finished in 1880, this was the tallest building in the world, until the Washington Monument overtook it four years later. Archbishop Konrad von Hochstaden laid the foundation stone on 15 August 1248, and Master Gerhard designed a church in the style of the French cathedrals. In the 15th century work on the south tower, the one on your right, came to a halt, and by 1560 the cathedral chapter had stopped paying for building. For about four hundred years a wooden crane stood on the stump of that tower. Work started again in 1842, and the completion was celebrated on 15 October 1880. The cathedral has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1996. Inside, behind the high altar, stands the Shrine of the Three Kings, a gold reliquary made between about 1190 and 1225 for bones that Archbishop Rainald von Dassel brought from Milan in 1164. The Catholic Church venerates them as relics of the Three Magi. Since 1 July 2026 a tourist visit inside costs 12 euros; services, prayer and lighting a candle in the north transept stay free. Walk along the south side of the cathedral, with the building on your left, to the big square beside it.

This is the Roncalliplatz, named after Angelo Roncalli, who became Pope John the Twenty-Third. The low building with the glass front is the Römisch-Germanisches Museum, the museum of Roman Cologne. In 1941 workers digging an air-raid bunker here found the floor of a Roman town house, the Dionysus mosaic, laid around 220 to 230 AD from more than a million small stones. It stayed where it was found, and the museum opened over it in 1974. The building has been closed for renovation since the end of 2018, and since 2022 the mosaic has been sealed under a protective cover, so you cannot see it through the windows for now. Many finds are on show in the museum's temporary home, the Belgisches Haus near Neumarkt. Look up at the south tower. It holds the Petersglocke, which Cologne calls Decke Pitter, Fat Peter, a bell cast in 1923 that weighs about 24 tonnes. You can climb this tower, 533 steps, with a ticket from the cathedral ticket office here on the square at number 2. Walk east past the museum to Heinrich-Böll-Platz in front of the Museum Ludwig, where another of our Cologne walks begins. Take the steps down to the railway bridge and walk onto its south footpath, the side facing the old town.

You are on the Hohenzollern Bridge, which carries trains between Köln Hauptbahnhof and Deutz. About 1,500 trains cross it every day, more than any other railway bridge in Germany. It was built from 1907 to 1911, lined up on the centre line of the cathedral, and Emperor Wilhelm the Second opened it on 22 May 1911. The equestrian statues at its ends show Prussian kings and German emperors of the Hohenzollern family. On 6 March 1945, as American troops reached the city centre, retreating German troops blew up the bridge. Trains crossed again from May 1948, but the road deck was never rebuilt. The padlocks on the fence began to appear in late summer 2008. Couples write names or a date on a lock, fasten it here and usually throw the key into the Rhine. Nobody has counted them; one estimate in 2015 put the number at around half a million. In 2018 Deutsche Bahn, which owns the bridge, announced that the locks would have to come off for rust protection, and dropped the plan the next day. Walk back off the bridge and down to the river. Follow the Rhine upstream, with the water on your left, through the Rheingarten park for about five minutes, until the tall, narrow houses of the Fischmarkt open up on your right.

The church above the roofs, with a square tower and four slim corner turrets, is Groß St. Martin, one of Cologne's twelve large Romanesque churches. In Roman times this ground was an island in the Rhine, and the church stands on the foundations of Roman storehouses. Building began after a fire destroyed the riverside quarter in 1150. The rounded, clover-leaf east end facing this square was consecrated in 1172 and has changed less than any other part. Benedictine monks served here until their abbey was dissolved in 1802. Air raids in 1942 and 1943 destroyed much of the nave and vaults, and the rebuilding was finished in 1985. Since 2009 a monastic community, the Fraternities of Jerusalem, has looked after the church, and its crypt shows the Roman remains. The square was Cologne's fish market, recorded in the 12th century as forum piscium. From 1259 the city held the staple right: goods shipped along the Rhine, including fish that mostly came from Holland, had to be offered to Cologne's citizens for three days. Walk a few steps south to Mühlengasse, turn right up the lane with the church on your right, and carry on to the square where a horseman stands on top of a fountain.

This is the Alter Markt, for centuries the main market of Cologne. Every year on 11 November at 11:11 the carnival season opens here. The horseman on the fountain is Jan von Werth, a cavalry general of the Thirty Years' War, and the fountain was unveiled on 14 July 1884. Its reliefs tell the legend: the farmhand Jan asks the maid Griet to marry him, she turns him down, he goes to war and comes back a general, and Griet regrets her answer. On Weiberfastnacht, the Thursday that starts street carnival, a parade acting out Jan and Griet ends at this fountain. Now look up at the town hall tower at the west end of the square. Under the clock, a wooden head with a floppy hat, a black beard and a red tongue looks down at you. This is the Platzjabbeck. The council paid for a head here in 1445, and since 1913 it has opened its mouth and stuck out its tongue every hour on the hour. Nobody knows for sure what it was meant to say. On the south side of the square, look for a small green copper man on a house front, squatting with his bare bottom out. He is the Kallendresser, made by the artist Ewald Mataré for a house built in 1956. Walk round the right side of the tower to the front of the town hall.

This is Cologne's historic town hall, with a recorded building history of more than 800 years. The oldest part still standing, the long hall behind this front, dates from around 1330. In that hall, the Hansasaal, the Hanseatic towns agreed on 19 November 1367 to go to war against King Waldemar the Fourth of Denmark. The tower, 61 metres high, followed between 1407 and 1414. The two-storey Renaissance porch in front of you was built from 1569 to 1573 to plans by Wilhelm Vernukken from Kalkar. The new building and the building site on this square are MiQua, the LVR Jewish Museum in the Archaeological Quarter. Under the square lie the remains of the Roman governor's palace, the Praetorium, part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2021. Beside it lie the medieval Jewish quarter, with the foundations of its synagogue and a ritual bath, a mikveh, first mentioned in 1270, and the houses of the Christian goldsmiths. A letter from Emperor Constantine to Cologne's city council in 321 is the earliest surviving written record of Jews north of the Alps. In 1424 the council expelled the Jews from the city, and the synagogue became the council's chapel. The museum is due to open in 2029. Because of the building site, go back down to the Alter Markt, turn right at its south end through Marsplatz, then right into Obenmarspforten, and walk to number 21, the house with a red tulip on its sign.

Eau de Cologne comes from this corner. Johann Baptist Farina, from Italy, founded a business in Cologne on 13 July 1709, and the firm still has its seat here. His brother Johann Maria Farina mixed a light scent from lemon, orange, bergamot and other citrus oils with herbs. In a letter of 1742 he called it Eau de Cologne, water of Cologne, after his adopted city. By the end of the 18th century the name had become the general word for a light fragrance. The firm still trades as Johann Maria Farina gegenüber dem Jülichs-Platz, "opposite Jülich Square", the square across the street, renamed Gülichplatz in 1815. It is the oldest perfume maker in the world still in business, and the founder's descendants run it in the eighth and ninth generations. Its mark is the red tulip, and the house holds the Fragrance Museum, the Duftmuseum, which you can visit on a paid tour. Cologne's other famous scent, 4711, is named after the old house number of the Mülhens family's premises in Glockengasse, a few streets west. Walk north along Unter Goldschmied, which becomes Am Hof, towards the cathedral spires. After about five minutes, stop at a fountain where a woman holds up a lantern.

This fountain tells Cologne's favourite legend. The Heinzelmännchen were little house spirits who did the townspeople's work at night while they slept. One night the tailor's curious wife scattered peas on the stairs to catch them. The little men slipped and tumbled, she ran out with a light, and they vanished for good. The poet August Kopisch made the story famous with his ballad of 1836, and the fountain was given for his hundredth birthday and made in 1899 and 1900 by Heinrich Renard and his father Edmund Renard. The tailor's wife stands at the top with her lantern, and the reliefs show the trades the little men took over. Across the street is Früh am Dom, a brewery tavern that Peter Josef Früh opened in 1904. Here Kölsch comes in a slim 0.2-litre glass called a Stange. Under the Kölsch Convention of 1986, only breweries in and around Cologne may use the name. The waiter, the Köbes, brings a fresh glass as soon as yours is empty and marks it on your beer mat. When you have had enough, put the mat on top of your glass. This is the end of the walk. The cathedral and Köln Hauptbahnhof are five minutes away, straight on along Am Hof and across the Domplatte.