Cologne: what to see, where to stay and how to get around

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Cologne is a Roman city with a Gothic cathedral on top of it. It was founded as a colony in 50 AD — the name is a worn-down Colonia — and was the capital of a Roman province for three centuries, which is why there is a governor’s palace under the city hall and a Roman sewer you can walk through. The cathedral above took six hundred and thirty-two years to build, with a three-hundred-year gap in the middle. Two hours, flat, and the cathedral is free.

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A short history of Cologne

The Germanic Ubii tribe lived here, and in AD 50 the Romans made the place a colony, named after Agrippina, the wife of the Emperor Claudius, who was born in the city. In 321 the Emperor Constantine signed a decree that mentions the Jews of Cologne, the oldest written evidence of a Jewish community north of the Alps. In 1248 work began on the cathedral, but it stopped in the 16th century and was completed only in 1880. In the Second World War most of the city centre was destroyed by bombing, and the cathedral was left standing amid the ruins. In 1996 it was declared a World Heritage Site.

The ten best sights in Cologne

1
Cologne Cathedral
Free to enter, 632 years to build, and the tower is 533 steps and 6 euro
2
Altstadt
Almost entirely rebuilt after 1945, and the old look is deliberate reconstruction
3
Alter Markt
The square where carnival starts at 11.11 on 11 November
4
Heumarkt
The hay market, and the Christmas market here is the oldest of the seven
5
Fischmarkt
The coloured gabled houses on the river, and the facades are 1950s copies
6
Groß St Martin
Free, the tower that anchors the skyline, and it stood roofless until 1985
7
Rathaus
Free, the oldest city hall in Germany, and the tower has 124 carved figures
8
Praetorium
5 euro, the Roman governor’s palace under the city hall, and a Roman sewer you can walk
9
Romano-Germanic Museum
Closed for renovation; the Dionysus mosaic is shown at the Belgian House
10
Museum Ludwig
13 euro, the largest Pop Art collection in Europe and a major Picasso holding

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Tours in Cologne →

A guide in your headphones: open the walk on our site, walk from stop to stop, and at each one your phone tells its story. No guide, no group, and free. This is the first walk in Cologne:

Free walking tours in Cologne

The cathedral and the Roman city

Cologne Cathedral · Begun in 1248 to house the bones of the Three Kings, which Cologne had taken from Milan as war loot in 1164 — the relics made the city a pilgrimage destination and the cathedral was built to hold the traffic. Work stopped in 1473 with the south tower half-built and a crane left on it for three hundred years. It was finished in 1880 using the original medieval plans, which had been rediscovered in an attic.
Hohenzollernbrücke · The busiest railway bridge in Germany, about twelve hundred trains a day, and the fence beside the footpath carries something over half a million padlocks weighing an estimated fifteen tonnes. The railway engineers were asked to remove them in 2011 on safety grounds, and the city refused on the grounds that people liked them.
Romano-Germanic Museum · The museum was built in 1974 directly over the place where the Dionysus mosaic was found — workmen digging an air-raid shelter in 1941 hit it, and it was left exactly where it lay. It is seventy square metres of a Roman dining room floor, and the building was designed around it rather than the other way round.
Rathaus · The oldest city hall in Germany, in use since about 1135, and the tower carries a hundred and twenty-four carved figures of people connected to the city. One of them, under the second-floor window, is a carving of a man biting his own knee — a medieval joke about a mayor who said a certain building would happen when he could do exactly that.
Praetorium · The Roman governor’s palace, found when the city hall was rebuilt after the war, and it is twelve metres under the modern street. From it a Roman sewer runs about a hundred metres, high enough to walk upright, and it is still dry — the Roman drainage of this city was never fully replaced and parts of it still carry water.
Groß St Martin · The tower that anchors every photograph of the old town, and it stood as a roofless shell from 1945 until 1985 — the reconstruction took forty years because the city argued the whole time about whether to rebuild at all. It sits on a Roman island: the warehouse and swimming pool foundations under it are visible in the crypt.

Twelve Romanesque churches

Cologne has twelve great Romanesque churches inside the medieval ring, which is more than any other city in Europe, and they exist because the city was rich on pilgrimage and trade in the eleventh and twelfth centuries and every religious house wanted its own. Ninety-five per cent of the old town was destroyed between 1942 and 1945 and all twelve were hit; rebuilding them took until 1985 and the arguments about how honest a reconstruction should be are still visible in the stonework. Three hours.

St Gereon · Built over a fourth-century Roman oval mausoleum, and in 1227 a ten-sided vault was raised over it — at the time the largest dome built in the West since Hagia Sophia, seven hundred years earlier, and the largest until Florence two centuries later. The lower walls are still Roman masonry you can put your hand on.
St Maria im Kapitol · The wooden doors here were carved around 1065 and are still hanging — they are the oldest surviving carved church doors in Germany, twenty-six panels of the life of Christ, and they survived the war because they were dismantled and buried. The church is built directly on the podium of the Roman Capitol temple.
St Pantaleon · The oldest standing church in the city, and Theophanu is buried in it — a Byzantine princess sent west in 972 to marry the Holy Roman Emperor Otto the Second, who then ruled the empire herself as regent for her son. She chose Cologne for her burial, and her sarcophagus is in the south transept.
St Aposteln · The clearest example of the thing Cologne invented: the trefoil east end, three apses in a clover shape around the altar instead of one. It gives a round, open space where other Romanesque churches give a dead end, and almost every church in this city copies it — it is why they feel different from German churches elsewhere.
Kolumba · Peter Zumthor built this museum in 2007 over the ruin of St Kolumba, and he did not clear the site: the new grey brick wall rises directly out of the broken Gothic one, with the join left visible and gaps left open so light and weather come in. The excavated Roman and medieval layers are below, crossed on a raised walkway.
St Kunibert · The last of the twelve to be finished, consecrated in 1247 — one year before work started on the Gothic cathedral, which makes it the end of an era by a single year. Its stained glass is original thirteenth-century work, which almost nothing else in the city is, because it was removed and stored before the bombing.

Beer, carnival and the quarters

Kölsch is two things at once: the beer and the dialect, and the local joke is that it is the only language you can drink. The beer is served in two-tenth-litre glasses that a waiter called a Köbes replaces without being asked until you put the beermat on top, and it is protected by a convention that means it can only be brewed here. Carnival runs the city for a week each spring. Two hours, and the evening is the time.

Früh am Dom · A brewery house beside the cathedral, and the system here is a trade convention: Kölsch comes in a stange, a straight two-tenth-litre glass, because it is top-fermented and goes flat fast, so small and often is the only way to drink it fresh. The waiter keeps a pencil tally on your beermat, which is how the bill is counted.
Alter Markt · Carnival opens here at eleven minutes past eleven on the eleventh of November, and the date is not arbitrary: eleven was the fools’ number in medieval numerology, one past the ten commandments and one short of the twelve apostles. The main week is in February, when about a million people come and the city effectively shuts.
Farina Fragrance Museum · Johann Maria Farina invented eau de cologne in this house in 1709 and named it after the city he had settled in. He wrote that it reminded him of an Italian spring morning after rain. It was the first perfume to use alcohol as a carrier rather than oil, which is why it was light enough to be worn by anyone, and the business is still run by the eighth generation of the family.
EL-DE Haus · The Gestapo headquarters for Cologne, and the ten cells in the cellar carry about eighteen hundred inscriptions scratched by prisoners — names, dates, calendars counting days, prayers in Polish, Russian and French. They were papered over after the war and rediscovered in 1979. People were hanged in the courtyard until weeks before the city fell.
Severinsviertel · The Vringsveedel is the quarter that claims to be the most Cologne part of Cologne — working class, Catholic, carnival-mad, and the one place where the dialect is still spoken in the street by people under fifty. It had its own gate in the medieval wall and has kept the habit of considering itself a separate place.
Rheinauhafen · A working harbour from the 1890s that was emptied by containerisation and rebuilt from 2002 as offices and flats. The three crane houses are inverted L shapes standing on the quay, and the form is a direct quotation of the dock cranes they replaced — the architects were required to keep the harbour readable rather than erase it.

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Getting to Cologne and getting around

Köln/Bonn Airport · 15 kilometres out, and the S19 train reaches the Hauptbahnhof in 15 minutes
Hauptbahnhof · The platform ends about 100 metres from the cathedral door
Hohenzollernbrücke · The busiest railway bridge in Germany, and the padlocks on it weigh about 15 tonnes
Seilbahn · 5 euro, crosses the Rhine in the air, and it closes from November to March

Cheap eats in Cologne

Kölsch is the beer and the dialect, and the local line is that it is the only language you can drink. The beer comes in a stange — a straight glass holding two-tenths of a litre — and the waiter, called a Köbes, replaces it without asking until you put the beermat on top. The food in a brewery house is short and fixed: Halver Hahn, which is rye bread with a slab of aged Gouda and not half a chicken as the name says; Himmel un Ääd, black pudding on apple and mashed potato; and Mettbrötchen, raw minced pork with onion on a roll. Five to fifteen euro.

Früh am Dom · A stange is about 2.50 euro, and the mat on the glass stops the refills
Päffgen · About 2.20 euro a glass, cash only, and no reservations
Lommerzheim · About 15 euro, closed Tuesday, and the queue starts before it opens
Malzmühle · About 2.40 a glass, a maltier Kölsch, and Clinton drank here in 1999
Brauhaus Peters · About 2.50 a glass, a stained-glass ceiling in a side alley, and the food is good
Weidengasse · A full plate for under 12 euro, and it runs late
Markthalle · Covered market stalls, cheese and charcuterie counters, and closed Sunday
Bierhaus en d’r Salzgass · About 2.50 a glass, in the old town but not a tourist room, and the Halver Hahn is the order

Museums in Cologne

Cologne’s museums split three ways: the Roman city underneath, modern art above, and the twentieth century in between. The modern art is here because of one donation — Peter and Irene Ludwig, chocolate manufacturers, gave the city three hundred and fifty Pop Art works in 1976 on condition it built them a museum, and that is how a Rhineland city came to hold the largest Pop collection in Europe.

Museum Ludwig · 13 euro, closed Monday, and free on the first Thursday evening
Wallraf-Richartz · 13 euro, closed Monday, and two hours is enough
Kolumba · 8 euro, no labels on the walls by design, and the rehang happens every September
EL-DE Haus · 6 euro, the Gestapo cells with 1,800 prisoner inscriptions, and it is hard going
Praetorium · 5 euro, the Roman governor’s palace 12 metres down, and the sewer is walkable
Chocolate Museum · 15.50 euro, busy at weekends, and the fountain is included
Farina Fragrance Museum · 8 euro, guided only, and the tour is 45 minutes with a tasting of the scent
Stadtmuseum · 5 euro, moved to a former department store, and the carnival floor is the best part

Holy places in Cologne

Twelve great Romanesque churches stand inside the medieval ring, more than in any other European city, and the reason is money: pilgrims came for the relics of the Three Kings and the trade that followed made Cologne one of the richest cities north of the Alps. All twelve were hit between 1942 and 1945 and rebuilding them took forty years, finishing in 1985 — the year the city chose as its anniversary.

Cologne Cathedral · Free to enter, 6 euro for the tower, and 533 steps with no lift
St Gereon · Free, a Roman oval with a 13th-century decagon on it, and the mosaic floor is new
St Maria im Kapitol · Free, the 1065 carved doors survived because they were buried
St Pantaleon · Free, the oldest standing church in Cologne, and usually empty
St Aposteln · Free, the clearest trefoil east end in the city, and it is on the Neumarkt
St Severin · Free, a Roman cemetery under the floor, and the quarter is named for it
St Kunibert · Free, finished in 1247, and its 13th-century glass is original
Groß St Martin · Free, and the crypt has the Roman foundations

Nature and day trips near Cologne

Cologne has a green belt instead of a wall. When Prussia demolished the fortifications in 1881 the city used the cleared ring to lay out parks, and the inner and outer green belts together are about five hundred hectares — a 1920s plan by Konrad Adenauer, then mayor, who wanted every citizen within walking distance of grass. The hills in them are not natural: they are wartime rubble, grassed over.

Rheinpark · Free, the cable car is 5 euro, and it runs April to October
Flora · Free, the 1864 glass house was restored in 2014, and the zoo is next door
Melaten Cemetery · Free, open till dusk, and the Millionenallee is the main avenue
Aachener Weiher · Free, the hill behind it is bombing rubble, and the whole city sits here in summer
Volksgarten · Free, a Prussian fort in the middle of it, and the lake has a beer garden
Decksteiner Weiher · Free, six kilometres out in the outer green belt, and rowing boats are hired there
Poller Wiesen · Free, and it genuinely floods in winter — check before going
Rodenkirchen · Nine kilometres upriver, a village inside the city, and there is a river beach

Things to do in Cologne with kids

Chocolate Museum · 15.50 euro, the fountain gives everyone a wafer, and book online at weekends
Cologne Zoo · 24 euro, the elephant park is the largest in Europe, and the aquarium is included
Seilbahn · 5 euro one way, over the Rhine at 50 metres, and closed November to March
Rheinpark · Free, big playgrounds and a miniature railway, and the cable car lands in it
Cathedral tower · 6 euro, 533 steps and no lift, and the bell chamber is halfway up
Hänneschen Theatre · From 12 euro, a puppet theatre running since 1802, and it is all in dialect
Flora · Free, the tropical house is the plan for a wet afternoon
Sculpture Park · Free, outdoor sculpture you can walk among, and the display changes every two years

Nightlife in Cologne

Three quarters and they are not the same crowd. Zülpicher Straße is the student strip, cheap and loud and the epicentre of carnival. The Belgisches Viertel is the design and cocktail quarter, where the streets are named after Belgian towns. And the Südstadt around Chlodwigplatz is where people who live here drink. Cologne has no legal closing time, and the Kölsch keeps coming until the mat goes on the glass.

Zülpicher Straße · Beers from 3 euro, and carnival Thursday here is ticketed
Brüsseler Platz · Beer from a kiosk is about 2 euro, and it clears at ten
Belgisches Viertel · Cocktails from 12 euro, no chains, and it runs later than the Südstadt
Chlodwigplatz · The Südstadt square, local bars and no tourists, and the medieval gate is on it
Stadtgarten · Tickets from 20 euro, and the beer garden outside is free
Ehrenfeld · Clubs in old factory sheds, cheap drinks, and the last trains stop around one
Alter Markt · The brewery houses round it, and carnival opens here at 11.11 on 11 November
Bastei · A 1924 expressionist room cantilevered over the Rhine, and it is a set-menu evening

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Frequently asked questions about Cologne

What is there to see in Cologne?

The top sights in Cologne are Cologne Cathedral, Altstadt and Alter Markt. The full list on this page has 10 sights, each with a photo and a short note.

How many days do you need in Cologne?

Three to four days are enough to see the best of Cologne without rushing, including at least one walking tour.

Is there a free walking tour in Cologne?

Yes. sleepntrip has 3 free audio walks in Cologne, with no guide and no group: your phone tells the story at every stop. The first one: The cathedral and the Roman city.

How do you get to Cologne and get around?

The main ways are Köln/Bonn Airport, Hauptbahnhof and Hohenzollernbrücke. Full details are in the transport section on this page.

Where to stay in Cologne, and for how much?

sleepntrip shows only rooms in Cologne that meet nine conditions: a good location, high guest scores, cleanliness, and a price of up to $80 a night for two. Pick your dates and see what is free.

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