What to See in Cologne - Top Sights and Attractions

Grand Gothic cathedral with twin spires. Cologne Cathedral is a Catholic cathedral in Cologne, North Rhine-Westphalia. It is the seat of the Archbishop of Cologne and of the administration of the Archdiocese of Cologne. It is a renowned monument of German Catholicism and Gothic architecture and was declared a World Heritage Site in 1996. It is Germany's most visited landmark, attracting an average of 20,000 people a day. At 157 m, the cathedral is currently the tallest twin-spired church in the world, the second tallest church in Europe after Ulm Minster, and the third tallest church in the world. It is the largest Gothic church in Northern Europe and has the second-tallest spires. The towers for its two huge spires give the cathedral the largest façade of any church in the world. The choir has the largest height-to-width ratio, 3.6:1, of any medieval church.

Construction of Cologne Cathedral began in 1248 but was halted in the years around 1560, unfinished. Work did not restart until the 1840s, and the edifice was completed to its original Medieval plan in 1880.

Cologne's medieval builders had planned a grand structure to house the reliquary of the Three Kings and fit its role as a place of worship for the Holy Roman Emperor. Despite having been left incomplete during the medieval period, Cologne Cathedral eventually became unified as "a masterpiece of exceptional intrinsic value" and "a powerful testimony to the strength and persistence of Christian belief in medieval and modern Europe". Only the telecommunications tower is higher than the Cathedral.^[1]

Zoo with elephant park and jungle house. The Aktiengesellschaft Cologne Zoological Garden is the zoo of Cologne, Germany. It features over 10,000 animals of more than 850 species on more than 20 hectares. The internationally renowned zoo with an attached aquarium and invertebrate exhibit is active in preservational breeding of animals that are in danger of becoming extinct. In addition, in-the-wild conservation efforts and research focussing on animals of Madagascar, Wallacea, and Vietnam are actively promoted and supported via cooperation with Cologne University and local projects, such as in the case of Przewalski's horses.

The zoo was founded in 1860. The world wars led to a phase of stagnation, and the zoo had to close for two years entirely, after virtually being destroyed in World War II. It reopened in 1947; the aquarium was added in 1971. In 1985, the large primate house, one of the main attractions, was opened. Today, the zoo also features a free-flight rainforest hall with free-ranging birds and reptiles opened in 2000, a large elephant park, a house for hippos with great underwater views, and as the latest addition, a farm with rare native species and petting zoo.^[4]

Museum for Roman artifacts and antiquities. The Roman-Germanic Museum is an archaeological museum in Cologne, Germany. It has a large collection of Roman artifacts from the Roman settlement of Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensium, on which modern Cologne is built. The museum protects the original site of a Roman town villa, from which a large Dionysus mosaic remains in its original place in the basement, and the related Roman Road just outside. In this respect the museum is an archaeological site.

The museum also has the task of preserving the Roman cultural heritage of Cologne, and therefore houses an extensive collection of Roman glass from funerals and burials and also exercises archaeological supervision over the construction of the Cologne underground.

Most of the museum's collection was housed at the Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne until 1946. In the front of the museum the former northern town gate of Cologne with the inscription CCAA (for Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensium) is on display in the building.^[13]

Unique plants from all over the world. The Flora und Botanischer Garten Köln is a municipal formal park and botanical garden located adjacent to Cologne Zoological Garden at Amsterdamer Straße 34, Cologne, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is open daily without charge.

The garden dates to 1863 when a private company was organized to create Flora park (5.5 hectares) as a replacement for the city's older botanical garden near the Cologne Cathedral, which in 1857 was destroyed for construction of the central railway station. This new park was designed by Peter Joseph Lenné in 1864 in a mixed German style, incorporating French Baroque, Italian Renaissance, and English landscape garden elements. In its center is a glass palace (orangery) structure of cast iron and glass patterned upon the Crystal Palace (London) and Jardin d'hiver (Paris), which served as an exhibition site through the late 19th century, including horticultural exhibitions in 1875 and 1888, and an industrial exhibition in 1889. Frauen-Rosenhof, an art nouveau garden, was added in 1906.

Between 1912 and 1914, as it suffered financial problems, the garden was acquired by the city, which in 1914 built an adjacent botanical garden (4.5 hectares). These two gardens were united in 1920, with new glasshouses and exhibition houses for exotic and tropical plants added in the 1950s.

Flora park was restored in 1987, and today contains an Italian Renaissance garden with hornbeam pergolas, cascade, and the (since a couple of years restored) Flora Temple, surrounded by gardens in the English landscape style, as well as a heather garden, fern garden, fragrance garden, Mediterranean garden, and pond. It also contains a number of notable trees, some dating to the garden's establishment; more than 60 specimens have been designated natural monuments.

The botanical garden cultivates nearly 10,000 types of plants, including approximately 2000 species in its alpine garden. It also contains good collections of magnolias, rhododendrons, coniferous trees, maples, and Hamamelidaceae, as well as a medicinal plant garden and farmer's garden of local crops. About 5,000 species are presented in four exhibition greenhouses:

• Main greenhouse – tropical rainforest plants.
• Small tropical house – tropical crops including bamboo, cinnamon, cocoa, coconut palm, coffee, pineapple, sugar cane, and vanilla, plus water and marsh plants including rice, taro, lotus, and water lilies.
• Subtropical house (opened 1964) – subtropical plants from the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Australia, including camellias, proteas, and tree ferns.
• Cactus house – cacti and succulents from the world's deserts and semi-deserts.

Romanesque church with iconic tower. The Great Saint Martin Church is a Romanesque Catholic church in Cologne, Germany. Its foundations rest on remnants of a Roman chapel, built on what was then an island in the Rhine. The church was later transformed into a Benedictine monastery. The current buildings, including a soaring crossing tower that is a landmark of Cologne's Old Town, were erected between 1150-1250. The architecture of its eastern end forms a triconch or trefoil plan, consisting of three apses around the crossing, similar to that at St. Maria im Kapitol. The church was badly damaged in World War II; restoration work was completed in 1985.

As of 2009 Great Saint Martin is being used by a branch of the Monastic Fraternities of Jerusalem and is open for visits again.^[16]

City government office in Cologne, Germany. The Historical Archive of the City of Cologne is the municipal archive of Cologne, Germany. It ranks among the largest communal archives in Europe.

A municipal archive has existed in Cologne since the Middle Ages. The oldest inventory of charters in the archive is dated 1408/1409. The oldest document kept in the archive is a charter dated AD 922.

The archive contains official records and private documents from all ages of Cologne history, as well as an extensive library of manuscripts. While the adjective "historical" in its name might suggest a closed, complete archive with a focus on older history, the archive is also the official government repository responsible for collecting recent municipal records.

The six-story archive building collapsed on 3 March 2009, along with two neighboring apartment buildings. Two residents of neighboring buildings were found dead. All archive staff and visiting archive users survived, as they were able to escape following a warning by construction workers. Around 90% of archival records were buried by the collapse, although it subsequently proved possible to rescue and repair many of them.

Construction work on a new archive began in 2016, and the new archive opened on 3 September 2021. At that time, a spokesperson for the Archive estimated that restoration work will require more than 200 persons' continuous effort for thirty years.^[23]

Romanesque church with a 10-sided dome. St. Gereon's Basilica is a German Roman Catholic church in Cologne, dedicated to Saint Gereon, and designated a minor basilica on 25 June 1920. The first mention of a church at the site, dedicated to St. Gereon, appears in 612. However, the building of the current choir gallery, apse, and transepts occurred later, beginning under Archbishop Arnold II von Wied in 1151 and ending in 1227. It is one of twelve great churches in Cologne that were built in the Romanesque style.

St. Gereon has a highly irregular plan, the nave being covered by a decagonal oval dome, 21.0 m long and 16.9 m wide, completed in 1227 on the remains of Roman walls, which are still visible. It is the largest dome built in the West between the erection of the Hagia Sophia in the 6th century and the Duomo of Florence in the 15th century.

Ernst Seifert built an organ there in 1898. In the 20th century, the architect Andreas Dilthey worked on its interior.

Archaeological excavation has revealed the presence of an earlier structure from the fourth century, possibly a funerary building that was converted into a church by the sixth century. This original church was perhaps called the church of the Golden Saints (ad sanctos aureos) by Gregory of Tours.^[27]

St. Maria ad Gradus is the name of a former church located East of the Cathedral of Cologne, Germany, situated between the cathedral and the Rhine.

Founded by Herman II, Archbishop of Cologne, the church was the burial site of blessed Richeza of Lotharingia (died March 1063), a former Queen of Poland and a grandchild of Otto II, Holy Roman Emperor and his wife Theophanu. The Romanesque building, 55m long and 42m wide, was probably completed by Archbishop Anno II in 1075, when the relics of St. Agilulfus of Cologne (died 750) were transferred there. Already in 1080 it burned down, but was rebuilt in 1085 and later expanded.

The remains of Richeza and others were later translated to the cathedral, which had been begun in 1248. Konrad von Hochstaden was canon of St. Maria ad Gradus and Archbishop of Cologne at this time, from 1238 to 1261.

Following the French occupation of the Rhineland in 1794, monasteries and religious foundations were dissolved, and churches abandoned. As St. Maria ad Gradus was too close to other churches (the Cathedral, Great St. Martin's, and St. Andreas), it was partially demolished in 1817; and most of what remained was removed in 1827 when the area was cleared to allow the Cathedral's restoration and completion. Only a few fragments remain.^[30]

Romanesque church with medieval artwork. St. Maria im Kapitol is an 11th-century Romanesque church located in the Kapitol-Viertel in the old town of Cologne, Germany. The name “im Kapitol“ refers to the Roman temple for the Capitoline Triad that was built on today’s site of the church in the first century. The Catholic church is based on the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, was dedicated to St. Mary and built between 1040 and 1065. It is one of twelve Romanesque churches built in Cologne during this period.

Measuring 100 m x 40 m and encompassing 4,000 square metres of internal space, St. Maria is the largest of the Romanesque churches in Cologne. Like many of the latter, it has an east end which is trefoil in shape, with three apses. It has a nave and aisles and three towers to the west. It is considered the most important work of German church architecture of the Salian dynasty.^[31]

Building in Cologne, Germany. KölnTriangle is a 103.2 metres tall building in Deutz, Cologne, and a prominent landmark in Cologne. The building was designed by Dörte Gatermann of Cologne-based architecture firm Gatermann + Schossig and completed in 2006. Its south facade consists of a double-facade, allowing natural ventilation even at high floors. Next to the high-rise structure, part of KölnTriangle is also a much larger six-story office block with a total gross floor area of 84,300 m2.

KölnTriangle is headquarters of the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA). The top floor and roof houses a publicly accessible observation deck with panorama views all over Cologne, in particular Cologne Cathedral, directly opposite the Rhine.^[32]