Cologne Old Town Highlights 2-Hour Guided Walking Tour

Cologne Cathedral and its facade

The tour begins in the shadow of Cologne Cathedral, the largest Gothic church in northern Europe and a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1996. Building started in 1248 to house the Shrine of the Three Kings, stopped for three centuries in the sixteenth, and was completed to the medieval plans only in 1880, when the two spires of 157 metres made it the tallest building in the world. The western facade is a wall of stone carving: prophets, apostles, kings and angels on the portals, gargoyles above them and the great window between the towers.

Your guide reads this facade for you, explaining the biblical scenes, the myths of the builders and the legend of the devil's bargain, and shows how the cathedral stood alone among the ruins of 1945. The interior is not included, but Cologne Cathedral opening hours are long, so you can go inside on your own before or after the walk; the cathedral is free to enter.

Roman Cologne around the Roman-Germanic Museum

Cologne was founded as a Roman colony in the year 50 and was the capital of the province of Lower Germany, which is why Roman stones surface all over the Old Town. Next to the cathedral stands the Roman-Germanic Museum, built in 1974 directly over a Roman villa whose mosaic floor, laid around the year 220 and showing scenes of a banquet, was found during the construction of an air-raid shelter in 1941. The mosaic can be seen through the museum's large window, and outside stand a reconstructed Roman tomb and fragments of the governor's palace.

On this Cologne walking tour the Roman period is told from outside: the guide shows the mosaic through the glass, the tomb monument, pieces of the Roman harbour road and the course of the city wall, whose tower still stands a few streets away. Allow about twenty minutes for this part, which answers the question many visitors ask: why is Cologne so much older than it looks?

Holocaust memorial and Hohenzollern Bridge

From the museum the walk crosses the square above the Cologne Philharmonic Hall, a concert hall built underground beside the museum of modern art, where a memorial to the Jewish citizens of Cologne murdered in the Nazi era is set into the ground. The guide pauses here to speak about the Jewish community of Cologne, documented since the year 321 and one of the oldest north of the Alps, and about the deportations that left from the city's stations.

A few steps further you climb onto the Hohenzollern Bridge, the three-arched railway bridge of 1911 that carries most of the trains into Cologne main station and whose railings are covered with tens of thousands of love padlocks. From the walkway you have the classic panorama: the cathedral and Great St. Martin on the left bank, the Old Town roofs and, downstream, the Crane Houses of the new harbour district. This is the photo stop of the tour, about fifteen minutes.

Rhine promenade and Great St. Martin

Back on the left bank the route follows the Rhine promenade along the Old Town, a wide embankment lined with the painted houses of the Fischmarkt and the terraces where the people of Cologne sit in the evening. Above the roofs rises Great St. Martin, the largest of the twelve Romanesque churches of Cologne, built between 1150 and 1250 on a former Roman island and rebuilt stone by stone after the war; its central tower with four turrets is the second signature of the Cologne skyline after the cathedral.

The guide explains the river trade that made medieval Cologne rich, the staple right that forced every passing ship to offer its cargo for sale, and the life of the fishermen and boatmen in the lanes behind the church. The promenade is the gentlest part of the walk and takes about twenty minutes.

Alter Markt, Heumarkt and the Historic Town Hall

The lanes of the Martinsviertel lead to the two oldest marketplaces of Cologne. Alter Markt, the old market, is closed at one end by the Historic Town Hall, the oldest town hall in Germany, first mentioned in 1135, with a Gothic tower from 1414 decorated with figures of people who shaped the city and a Renaissance loggia from the 1570s in front of the entrance. Beside it lies the archaeological zone of the medieval Jewish quarter, where the synagogue and the ritual bath are being uncovered under a new museum.

Heumarkt, the hay market, opens beyond it, the largest square of the Old Town and once its trading floor for grain, horses and timber. From here the walk returns past the shopping streets to the cathedral and ends at the fairy-tale fountain that tells the legend of the house gnomes of Cologne, after about two hours.