Koln K O L N (sorry family joke)

When I arrived in Koln on Tuesday, the weather was perfect and such a contrast to Koblenz. The sun was shining, it wasn’t windy and it wasn’t too cold. So I decided to take advantage of the good weather (as it is such a rare occurrence at this time of the year in Europe) and try and see as much as I could outside. I grabbed a tourist map at the hostel (it wasn’t a great map but did have most of the important buildings marked on it) and headed first to the cathedral. It is very unfortunately placed right next to the train station. And I mean right next to the train station (like on its front steps). I headed up the steps to the north entrance of the church which has three old portals.

The cathedral is actually quite deceiving in that it wasn’t actually all built during the gothic period. Most of it was built during the 19^th century. The original church on the site was consecrated in the 9^th century and one of the bishops from this church brought the relics of the Magi from Milan in the 11^th century and it was decided that they needed a more impressive church to house such important relics. They then got the plans made in the style of the new gothic churches in France and raised money through the pilgrims coming to see the relics. The first section (the choir and the surrounding chapels) was built in the 13^th century and there were plans to build the rest of the church to go with it. Building did continue into the 16^th century but at that stage they still hadn’t built the towers or most of the outside that currently stands. They had built one of the towers but only to the second storey. I guess that they just ran out of money and didn’t bother trying to raise any more at that stage because they had enough church to keep using. In the 1800s, they decided that they should finish the church and used the old designs (which were found in the tower) to finish off the building including all the exterior decoration. So that’s why it’s actually in quite good condition. It was damaged during the second world war but not as badly as some of the other churches. Both towers were still standing in the end which is quite an achievement. Their biggest problem now is damage from pollution which is the reason that the entire outside of the cathedral is almost black. It makes any repairs that they do blindingly obvious due to their whiteness even if the stone actually matches.

I entered from the side of the church and bought one of the small guides that they sell at the door. They are 1 euro and well worth buying as there is nothing written around the church about any of the objects inside. The tour starts at the main entrance into the cathedral so I walked down there just to make it easier to orientate myself. I was really lucky that it was a sunny day outside as you could see things quite easily and all the windows looked fantastic. Along the north side of the nave there is a set of windows which are from the early 16^th century and depict various biblical stories plus show saints. They are lovely to look at and very brightly coloured in the sun. The windows on the south side of the church were donated by the king when the building recommenced in the 1840s. I assume that they removed all the windows during the war as they all seem to be mostly originally in the cathedral.

Back to the north side of the nave, there is a lovely altar piece from the church of the Poor Clares that was moved to the cathedral in the 19^th century. The piece dates from around 1350 and has various saints on the front. It’s the back that is the most stunning with a large painting of the holy trinity and the evangelists on it. This then brings you back to the side entrance of the cathedral and there is a little area for lighting candles that has a clothed statue of the Madonna and child in it. It’s one of those slightly creepy ones that are like a doll in a long dress that they loved so much in the Baroque times. It’s known as the Schmuck Madonna because she is covered in jewelry (some of it quite valuable) and there are lots of extra pieces in cabinets around her. She has supposedly worked miracles in the past and is one of the more valuable pieces in the cathedral.

This then leads you through into the original 13^th/14^th century section of the cathedral. The mosaic floor in this section is really well done but is actually an addition from the 19^th century building works. The chapels and the choir section of the cathedral was being used regularly from 1265 but has been renovated since then.

The first chapel contains the oldest monumental crucifix in the Western World (I assume that they are excluding the middle east in this) and was donated to the church in the mid 10^th century prior to the building of the current building. The story goes that it was cracking and the bishop pushed a bit of host into the crack and it stopped it from getting worse and since then the cross has performed miracles. The rest of the chapels have various graves of important people from Koln. Most are archbishops from over the centuries. It seems from the stories too that most of the archbishops in Koln were related to the princes and kings from the area so there was definitely very little separation of church and state in the middle ages in Koln. The oldest chapel is directly behind the altar and it contains an original window from 1265. The ones on either side of it are slightly more recent and were made in 1300. They are really lovely looking and very delicately done. They seemed to use very small pieces of glass (I guess it was harder to make the big ones then) and painted a lot on them to get the faces and clothes. The rest of the furniture in the chapel is much more recent.

The last of the side chapels has a beautiful altar of the Annunciation which was painted by Stefan Lochner who is one of the most famous gothic painters from Koln. It was done around 1442 and is stunning. The light coming from the Madonna is just incredible. He had obviously worked out how to paint the undercolours perfectly.

The shrine of the three Magi is on the altar in a glass box and is actually quite difficult to see clearly because of all the other things in the way. It’s silver that has been dipped in gold and is very very shiny. I’m not sure exactly which bits of the Magi are in it but I assume that it has assorted bones. The choir stands in front of it are the largest in Germany and were built in the 14^th century. You can still see the remanents of the gothic decorations on the stones on the outside of the choir but much of it has faded away.

I’ve finally worked out who the man with the baby and the tree/stick is. It’s St Christopher. He’s just depicted differently here compared to Spain where I saw his statues more regularly. The side entrances are really lovely and you can get great photos across the church on a sunny day.

I decided to climb the tower as it was a nice day and I figured that I might be able to see something. It’s a long way up to the top with nearly 500 steps and it’s quite a hike. The first section is in a windy spiral staircase and takes you up into the middle of one of the spires. You then switch to a mesh stairway that takes you up another 6 flights to another metal spiral staircase which brings you out at the top. You then walk around a wooden platform that is suspended around the spire. It’s totally enclosed in a mesh cage to stop people from throwing things off it. Or falling I guess. It makes it very difficult to take photos because of the mesh blocking virtually everything. Koln is also not a very picturesque city either. It was mostly destroyed during the war and they had to rapidly rebuilt sections of the city to provide housing for the people so there are lots of mass produced 50s apartment blocks and offices in the middle of the old city. Having a bit of an issue with things you can see through (like mesh stairs that are three storeys above the ground) meant that I wasn’t feeling great when I got to the platform anyway so wasn’t particularly keen to hang around. The whole experience is also ruined by the fact that literally every single spare inch of space on the stone and metal work all the way up the steps and on the outside of the tower is covered in graffiti (of the usual Stefan was here type) and they don’t seem to have made any effort to clean any of it off for at least 3 decades. I really don’t understand people’s need to write on historical objects.

You can make a brief detour from the spiral stairs in to see the bells of the church. It’s in a little area to make any claustrophobics who have survived the stairs turn into jibbering messes. They have built a series of small tunnels that are only one person wide that you walk through around the edge of the tour and periodically they open up to a platform so that you can see the bells. The tunnels are also completely covered in graffiti though thankfully the bells seem to have been saved. Maybe permanent marker doesn’t work well on bells.

So I headed back down after taking a couple of photos and went to the Domschatzkammer. I had bought a combined ticket for this and the tower which saves 1.50. You have to go to both in the same day though. So I walked through to the entrance and left my stuff in a locker. It’s a really good collection of metalware, clothing and fancy decorative pieces from the church. Some of the robes came from France and were originally part of a 44 piece matching set that was specially made for a coronation (it was the archbishop’s brother after all). In the rooms that store the collection, you can see sections of the old Roman wall which was underneath the original church. When they were digging to build extra rooms in the cellar they also found a couple of graves from the 6^th or 7^th century. They contained a woman and a small boy with a large number of jars, vases and jewelry. All of this is on display.

They also have the original wooden box from the shrine of the Magi which was inside the gold box that is still on display. Unfortunately it was renovated in the 19^th century and they added some very unfortunate paintings to the outside.

After finishing the Dom, I headed back outside to walk around the other two sides of the building. Most of the people are in the front square where the two towers are but the southern view of the church is actually the nicer one (and a lot easier to get into the one photo without having to be halfway up the street). I then set out to see what else Koln had to offer.

The Romanisches-Germanishes Museum is in the square next to the cathedral and you can actually look in the windows are the mosaic that covers the floor of the museum. I headed past here and down to the river front. It’s not as picturesque as some of the other German river cities but there are a couple of parks.  I walked along through the old section of buildings where the old town wharf used to be and up to Gross St Martin which is one of the largest Romanesque churches in town. Unfortunately it closes at lunchtime so I had to come back later. It’s just in front of the town hall so I slipped through an alley and into one of the many squares in the middle of town. There is a fountain and you can see the back side of the town hall. Unfortunately there are lots of scaffolding and pipes and all sorts of things in the square are the moment because they are working on a new U-bahn line. The Town Hall is a funny looking building as it has had little bits added over the years. The tower is quite tall and has little statues of important people in the history of Koln all around it. There’s a very ornate portico over the front doors which seems to be where people come to get married. There are lots of signs up saying don’t throw rice as it attracts the pigeons (something that everyone in Europe seems to hate).

I zigzagged through the streets from here past the Overstolzen house which is one of the oldest buildings in Koln and back down to the waterfront. Here there is a chocolate museum that is built out on a little island but given that I’m on my way to Belgium, I figured that I didn’t need any chocolate. I made a brief diversion from my walk here to go to St Maria Lyskirchen which is another of the Romanesque churches. It’s in a little side street just back from the water. It’s got a lovely painted ceiling and is worth popping in for a look if you are walking past. There are lots of modern buildings going in down on the water including a pair of giant glass buildings that are almost finished. They look like they are going to be apartments. Not far from there you pass one of the original old town towers called the Bayen Tower. Not much of the old wall remains around the city and there are only three remaining gates from the original 12. There are several defensive towers that are still standing mostly at the opposite end of town to the cathedral.

I set off to keep following the line of the old town wall (which now pretty much has a road along it) and ended up at the Bottmuhle which is one of the old defence towers. It was changed into a windmill when it was no longer needed for the wall and is now in private ownership. Continuing along the street you come to one of the gates from the wall, Severinsgate. It’s now just shoved in amongst the shops and has a huge building site on the other side of it so doesn’t look like anything special. Just up the street is St Severin’s Church which was built in the 13^th century. It has some great paintings on the walls in the choir but is otherwise nothing special on the inside. I think it’s probably nicer from the outside on the whole.

I returned to the wall and continued to follow it around until I got to another defensive tower. This one is now a restaurant I think but is probably the most attractive of all the towers even though it is next to a main road. My next diversion from the route was to see St Pantheleon’s Church which is really nice. It was originally part of a Benedictine Abbey. It was built initially in the 10^th century but has had major work done since then so most of the building isn’t that old. They also rearranged things a bit and moved the organ after the war so it doesn’t look the same as it did in the early 20^th century. One thing that all the churches in Koln seem to have is a little board with the history of the building and pictures or drawings of how it used to look and how it looked after WWII. It’s really interesting to see the differences between how things are today and how they were 100 years ago. This church is also home to some relics in big shiny gold boxes. Koln seems to have a lot of them but it was the most powerful religious city north of the Alps for a long time so I guess they got a lot as presents. All in all it was quite an attractive church and well worth walking down for a visit. It’s also one of the few churches in Koln that hasn’t been hemmed in by the surrounding buildings so you can actually walk around it and get decent pictures of the outside without apartment blocks in them.

On I headed into the middle of the newer part of town. I stopped briefly at the Baroque church of St Maria in der Kupfergasse which is home to a miracle working black Madonna who is able to be seen in the front chapel of the church. The rest of the building was locked so I could only peer in through the glass at it.

The Zeughaus was the old armoury of the city and now houses the city museum (more about that later because I did come back here). I continued along the line of the old Roman wall which was much closer to the city than the medieval one. There is one tower remaining from this older wall and it’s been semi built into another building. Just around the corner is the Church of St Gereon (who I’ve never heard of) but he must have been important because it’s one fancy church. It’s another of the Romanesque ones and it one of the biegger churches from the group. It was built over the top of an old Roman church and graveyard in the 9^th century but the current building was started in the 13^th century after in the 12^th century the relics of St Gereon were miraculously discovered and they could get some money for a new building. It was one of the churches that was changed quite a bit during the 19^th century but was returned to closer to the original after the war.

At this point I’d had enough and returned to the hostel to check into my room properly and then go to the supermarket and get something for dinner.

It was nice to be able to cook for myself even if it was only a basic meal and I had dinner with a couple of others from the hostel which was also nice. You get sick of eating in restaurants alone when you are travelling solo. They had heard that the City archive building had collapsed in the middle of the afternoon and suggested that we go for a walk to see what had happened. We walked down that way and found that most of the roads surrounding the area were blocked off by the police. They are building the new U-Bahn just down the road so are concerned that is the reason why the building basically fell into a hole, taking the building next door with it. The entire history of the city was stored in that building and much of it hadn’t been copied at all. It rained most of the next day so what little survived the collapse was unlikely to have survived the water. We couldn’t see anything of the building from any of the road blocks so decided to head back to the hostel. There were so many police, firies and ambos around, it was incredible. I wouldn’t have thought that there were that many police in Koln but I suppose there are lots of other big cities close by so maybe some came from there. There were also lots of concrete mixers (like 40 of them) but I suppose there are lots in town working on the new tunnels for the trains and they just called them all in. I assume they were trying to stabilise the buildings around it and stop further collapses.

Day two in Koln was another busy one. I had a lot of churches to see and a couple of museums as well so I set off early to try and get some of the churches in before the museums opened (lots don’t open in Koln until 11 or 12). First I went to St Maria Himmelfahrt which is just down the road from the hostel. It’s a baroque church and is pretty enough but just not to my taste. St Andreas is just around the corner from the Dom and is another of the Romanesque churches. It’s also quite big. They seem to have a lot of large churches for not that big a population in Koln.

St Andreas as a really lovely entry into the church and the arches have a really good symmetry and curve. There is also an altar of the Madonna of Mercy (that’s the one with cloak out covering the people from the wrath of God) that is from the gothic era. You can see the faint remains of the wall paintings from earlier times in a couple of areas of the church too. And like all churches in Koln, there is a big shiny gold box with some relic in it. Interestingly none of them were made of pure gold because it’s too soft and won’t hold its shape over time. Most of them were made of copper or silver and then plated in gold to give them the appearance.

The Minoritenkirche is also from the 12^th century but isn’t included in the list of Romanesque churches for some reason. It is worth a visit though as it is in the middle of town and is very starkly decorated. They have put some of the old damaged statues up on the wall incomplete and it really works well on the plain walls.

This time Gross St Martin, (by the way gross in german means big. It’s not that he’s awful) was open this time (just) so I got to see inside. It’s really big and is one of the churches that you can see in the skyline of Koln. It was almost completely destroyed during the war (it’s worth looking at the pictures that they have up of it in 1945) and they have only restored the main building with very little of the decoration redone. It’s very plain but the lines are good and I imagine on a sunny day the light would also be very nice.

Not far from there is St Maria im Kapitol which has well and truly been built in amongst the buildings. There have been apartments built along the top wall of the cloisters even. So you have to walk through a little alley way to find the entrance of the church now. Like some of the other churches it was completely rebuilt after the war and they rearranged things slightly. It looks from the pictures like the organ is now in a different position. It’s got much more gothic additions than some of the others but is very attractive. There are an old set of original wooden doors with carvings from the Bible on them up the back of the church and they are worth a look as well.

Finally I came to go to St Cecilia’s which is one of the old churches but also now a museum of religious art. It’s not huge but the collection is well preserved and well displayed in the old church and if you are interested in medieval art, it is worth the entrance fee. I bought a Koln Museum Card which is 12.20 euros and is valid for 2 days. You can go to 11 museums in the city using it and can visit each one once during the 2 days. You need to be visiting at least three of the museums to make it worth getting (and I knew that I would be given the weather forecast). Most of the pieces in the museum come from local churches and abbeys and were either collected in the 19^th century when the convents were closed down or after the war when some of the churches weren’t rebuilt. There are lots of reliquaries and the creepy thing is that all the female ones seem to have exactly the same face. There is a reasonable amount of variation in the male ones but virtually none in the female ones. And I’m sure that they can’t be from the same saint as the bust reliquaries usual hold part of the skull and people only have one of those. There is a fantastic section on memento mori and there is a carved rotting corpse covered in worms and flies made out of ivory. Where on earth would you display something like that? After an hour of walking around here, I headed onto the next church on my list, St Aposteln.

I really liked the structure of this church and even though it had mostly modern decorations somehow it all worked together. It did have some gothic statues as well. After visiting here it started to rain again so it was back into the museums to keep warm and dry. I went to the Richartz-Wallgraf Museum which is an art gallery near to the town hall. It’s also included on the museum card. There are three floors of art work. The first covers from the 12^th century through to the 16^th century and is mostly religious art. The second floor covers 16^th and 17^th century art and has lots of portraits. The third floor covers 19^th and 20^th century art and also has really good views across the city to the cathedral (so is worth walking up to even if you aren’t interested in the art). I spent most of my time on the first floor and it’s a really well put together collection. It focuses a lot on the changing of style over the centuries and looks at the influences on local painters and the changes that they put into place. Most of the artworks are in very good condition and the few more damaged ones are interesting in that you can see a bit more how they prepared the base for the paintings. There is a great series on the life of St Ursula (who was actually martyred here in Koln so the story goes) that seems to involve many naked women in big baths getting baptised. No wonder the priests all seem to have smiles on their faces. It was still raining when I came out 2 hours later so I headed onto the city museum since it was included on my card.

It’s actually a really interesting museum and is worth an hour or two of your time if you are in Koln. It covers the history of the city and its industry and is spread over two floors. It starts with modern times and slowly works its way backwards to the Romans (though it doesn’t cover them in great detail). There are free audioguides in about 6 languages at the main entrance that give a brief overview of each section and talk about the most important items. There are some incredible pictures of Koln after the war and a little video of some of the tidying up that started in 1945. 80% of all the buildings in the middle of Koln were uninhabitable after the bombing stopped so they pretty much had to start again. Surprisingly the iron bridge crossing the Rhein next to the train station was the last bridge to be left standing over the river. It wasn’t bombed until quite late in the war. I only had an hour as the museum was closing for the day and I could have done with a little longer as there were some interesting things upstairs about day to day life in the early 20^th century that I would have liked to have a closer look at. Outside this museum is also a section of the old Roman wall with some marble carvings on it.

My final day in Koln was wet. Really wet. It rained the entire day without break (or at least not that I noticed) and it was quite cold. I decided that I had to just brave the weather or I was going to miss out on some of the churches. So I headed off to the final two on my list: St Kunibert and St Ursula. They completed the 12 (with the exclusion of St Georg because it was closed because of the building collapse) churches.

St Kunibert is just on the other side of the train station from the cathedral and is in a quiet little square next to a hospital. I have no idea who St Kunibert was but he pissed someone off big time because he was martyred by being thrown into a river with an anchor tied to him (or at least that’s the story I gained from the pictures). There are lots of reliquaries in this church too and I suspect that the very shiny gold bust is of St Kunibert. They are locked into a little glass room in one corner of the church. There are some of the original gothic altars and art work still on display in this church and some wall paintings that are in good repair (though quite difficult to see because of the poor light and the blocking off of the choir).

Then it was back into the rain and off to St Ursula’s which is also on the outskirts of the old town. It was originally built on top of a Roman temple and graveyard. The story goes that St Ursula was an English princess who set off on a pilgrimage to Rome to visit the Pope before she got married. She took with her 11 virgins as companions. They stopped in Koln on the way back and unfortunately the city was besieged at the time by the Huns and they killed Ursula and her companions. When the locals discovered the graveyard, they decided that they must have found the spot where Ursula was killed and excavated it. Unfortunately, they found lots and lots of bones, so the story changed and it became 11 thousand virgins that had been with her and that was why it was such a big grave. The explanation for the male and children’s bones in the graves was that she had many other pilgrims travelling with her. So they dug up all the bones (somehow identifying the ones that belonged to Ursula) and built a church in her honour on the spot. The church is one of my favourites and is definitely worth a visit. It’s only 5 minutes walk from the cathedral so it’s not out of the way. The original church is Romanesque like all the others but the gothic style choir was added later on. It had lots of decorations added during the 19^th century but most of them were destroyed during the war and only some mosaics of the old testament prophets have survived. There are several old statues including the lovely one of St Ursula sheltering the virgins under her cloak. This is also one of the few churches where you can go up into the choir and look more closely at the decorations. The only section of it that is closed off is the shrine of St Ursula right at the back of the choir.

At the front entrance of the church there is a little side room which contains about 50 reliquaries and a whole lot more bones that were dug up out of the graveyard. They have even spelled out words on the walls using the bones (slightly tacky but I’ve seen worse in churches). You have to pay a euro to get in but you can take photos without a flash.

Next stop was the Museum of Applied Art which is just near the cathedral (behind the Dom forum building). It has a large collection of furniture, glassware, china and other everyday items from the Roman times through to the present. There is a special exhibition on at the moment about a local architect called Gottfried Bohm who designed some of the most famous buildings in Germany. He did the new dome on the Reichstag in Berlin, the library in Ulm, the Walt Disney concert hall in LA and many many others. He started in the 50s and designed lots of new churches when the decision was made to demolish what was left of the damaged old ones. The exhibition contains lots of his designs, models and pictures of the buildings now that they have been completed. It was very well put together. Upstairs there is a collection of every day items that goes through from the Roman times to the Art Nouveau period in the early 20^th century. It’s an impressive collection of all sorts of bits and pieces spread over many rooms. There is a fantastic baroque travel kit that contains 140 essential items for the traveler and was made specifically for a man. He had another one that contained 190 essential items but it’s in a different museum. The essential items seemed to include at least 5 pairs of scissors and a lot of spoons for some reason. I guess in those days they didn’t have to worry about excess baggage. Or indeed, carrying their own luggage! The historical section covers all those neo styles like neo baroque and neo classical. This section contains some of the ugliest porcelain things that I have ever seen. They really worked hard to make them this ugly. Back downstairs I had a quick look at the 20^th century design exhibition (which I think is also a special exhibition) before heading out to find some lunch.

I ended up at a nearby bagel and soup place as it looked warm inside and it was still bucketing rain. After refueling and drying out, I headed back out into the rain and down the street to Kolumba which is the new name of the Diocese museum. It moved from its old home next to the cathedral into an old church and a newly built building a few streets away. It’s 5 euros to get in and I don’t know that I would have bothered had it not been raining and had I known what was inside. It’s an unusual collection to say the least and not at all what I was expecting. On the ground floor they have the remains of the foundations of St Columba before it was ruined. You can see all the different churches that have been built on the site over the last 1000 years and even a little bit of the Roman buildings that were there before. It’s quite confusing though and difficult with the little guide book to try and work out what belongs to what era.

Then you go upstairs and start seeing the art. It’s a mixture of modern and old religious art and some of it is just plain weird (and difficult to see the connection to the church). The video about the genocide in Rwanda is well worth watching and goes for about 20 minutes. Some of the other stuff you could just skip completely. The WTF award goes to Paul Thek’s “A Procession in Honour of Aesthetic Progress: Objects to Theoretically Wear, Carry, Pull or Wave. It has a series of boxes (which one assumes that you can wear) covered in things like stuffed ravens and fake raw meat. I feel that it really did lose something in translation. There are some nice older pieces in the collection though and they have some more of Stephan Lochner’s work which is just beautiful.

I had run out of time to make it to anymore museums before closing time so I headed back into the cathedral for one last look. It was much darker than it had been two days earlier and it was quite hard to see some of the details inside the church. I was glad to have taken lots of photos earlier. I grabbed a quick kebab for dinner as I was feeling tired after my long day and it was still raining. Then it was back to the hostel and packing up to head off the next morning to Aachen.