Private Cologne Tours and Rhineland Programmes

Where Cologne is, and what it is

Cologne stands on the Rhine in North Rhine-Westphalia, in the western corner of Germany, about 40 kilometres south of Duesseldorf and half an hour north of Bonn. It is the fourth-largest city in the country and by some distance the oldest of the large ones: the Romans raised it to the rank of colonia in AD 50 at the request of Agrippina the Younger, who had been born on the spot, and the name the city still uses is that Latin word worn down by nineteen centuries. The geography that matters to an itinerary is the connections. Frankfurt Airport is about an hour away by high-speed train, Brussels under two, Amsterdam under three, Cologne Bonn Airport twenty minutes from the centre — and almost every Rhine river cruise ties up within walking distance of the cathedral.

The cathedral, and the reason it is that size

Building began in 1248, stopped in 1473 with the choir finished and a crane left standing on the south tower for nearly four hundred years, and was taken up again by the nineteenth century, which completed the work in 1880 to the surviving medieval plans. That is 632 years from first stone to last, and for four years afterwards it was the tallest building in the world at 157 metres. UNESCO listed it in 1996.

The reason for the scale sits behind the high altar. In 1164 the archbishop carried off from Milan what were held to be the relics of the Three Kings, and Cologne became a pilgrimage destination almost overnight. The shrine built to hold them is the largest reliquary in the Western world. Two practical notes: the nave is free and packed from mid-morning, so clients go in before nine or after five; and the south tower is 533 steps with no lift. The Gerhard Richter window of 2007 in the south transept, 11,500 squares of glass in 72 colours, is the thing guests photograph most and expect least.

What the war left, and what it did not

Cologne was bombed harder than almost any German city and the old town was largely flattened; the cathedral stood, hit repeatedly, above the rubble. Clients expecting an intact medieval quarter around the Alter Markt should be told in advance that most of what they walk through is post-war reconstruction. What did survive, and what almost no itinerary includes, is the ring of twelve great Romanesque churches inside the line of the medieval walls: the ten-sided nave of St. Gereon, the trefoil choir of St. Maria im Kapitol, the tower of Groß St. Martin over the old town roofs.

Museums worth the half-day

Museum Ludwig, beside the cathedral, holds one of the largest Pop Art collections in Europe, a substantial Picasso group and a serious Russian avant-garde room. The Wallraf-Richartz Museum runs from the medieval Cologne School to the nineteenth century and is the quieter of the two. Kolumba, the archdiocesan museum built by Peter Zumthor over a bombed church and a Roman street, is an architectural visit in its own right. The Roman-Germanic Museum and its Dionysus mosaic have been through a long refurbishment with the collection split across a temporary home, so we confirm where an object actually is before it goes into a programme.

Koelsch, and how it is served

Koelsch may only be brewed in and around the city. It arrives in a 0.2-litre cylinder called a Stange, carried by a waiter called a Koebes who keeps replacing it and pencilling the tally on your beer mat until you lay the mat over the glass. Clients enjoy being told that in advance rather than discovering it with a fifth beer they did not order. Frueh, Paeffgen, Sion and the Malzmuehle are the houses people name. The honest caution is that the brewhouses closest to the cathedral are the busiest and the least representative; ten minutes on foot buys a completely different evening.

Carnival, and the weeks it eats

The season opens on 11 November at 11.11 in the morning, but the week that matters runs from Weiberfastnacht to Rosenmontag in February or March. The city genuinely stops: offices close, the parade takes hours to pass, hotels sell out a year ahead at several times the normal rate. Either a client has come for it, in which case the booking is made twelve months out, or they have not, in which case Cologne is the wrong city that week and we will say so before it is quoted. Advent is easier, with several markets across the centre and the large one below the cathedral. May, June and September are the pleasant months.