What to do in Cologne Germany
Cologne, capital of the Rhineland, is one of the oldest and most distinguished cities in Germany. It lies at the centre of a pious but never austere religious tradition where good Catholics take a secular, even pagan delight in the joys of the flesh. The great symbol of the Church's abiding authority is Cologne's gigantic, almost overpowering, twin-spired cathedral. Yet the town is the scene every year of Germany's most riotous, lusty, frolicking Carnival, when wives put away their wedding rings and the husbands are not home to complain.
Long a commercial and cultural centre, Cologne has witnessed the nation's growth from earliest Roman times through medieval prosperity to its present state of comfortable stability. It has been home to a number of famous people: in the 16th century Peter Paul Rubens, the painter of exuberantly fleshy nudes, grew up among the burgers' stout wives. About 70 years later, in 1642, Maria de Medici, the wife of Henry IV of France, died here in exile; her heart is buried in the cathedral. The composer of Orpheus in the Underworld, Offenbach, was born here in 1819.
Cologne car hire Germany
The best way to explore Cologne is to book a hire car from the airport in Germany before you travel.Cologne's site on the Rhine is of prime importance. The old city was founded on the left bank, the new industrial centre on the right (Deutzer) bank.
It is the ideal starting place for a visit to the Rhine Valley, land of mists and towering rocks, terraced vineyards and avenues of poplars, Gothic churches and ruined castles, of every poetic image dear to the romantic side of the German character. But it's also coal barges, express trains and juggernaut lorries, cement works and power plants. Phoenix/like, Cologne arose after World War II from a rubble strewn desert to the proud, businesslike city of today. For now, as in centuries past, Rhinelanders settle down to their romantic dreams only after a hard day's work.
History of Cologne
A Brief History 1000750 B.C. Celts settle on the west bank of the Rhine, Germanic tribes occupy the east. In 72 B.C. the Germanic king Ariovistus crosses the Rhine with 15,000 troops and conquers part of Gaul. Gallic leaders call on the Romans for help and Caesar defeats Ariovistus in 58 B.C., driving the Germans back across the Rhine. Three years later the Gallic left bank is declared a Roman Protectorate. In 38 B.C., Augustus's general Agrippa brings a Germanic tribe, the Ubii, across to the left bank, and establishes the settlement of Oppidum Ubiorum.
Julia Agrippina, wife and murderess of the Roman Emperor Claudius, renames her birthplace Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensis, shortened later to Colonia. The Roman Rhineland suffers under invading barbarians, first the Alemanni who conquer Cologne, later the Burgundians, who are in turn defeated by the Huns. Turmoil continues with wars between the Alemanni and the Franks; the latter achieve supremacy under Clovis, who introduces Christianity. At the beginning of the 9th century, Charlemagne establishes a Christian European empire and builds his imperial palace on the edge of the Rhineland at Aachen. Cologne, already a bishop's see, becomes an archbishopric.
The Rhineland becomes a major recruiting centre for the Crusades to rescue Jerusalem from the Infidel. At Easter, 1096, Peter the Hermit arrives in Cologne with thousands of French eager to fight for the cause. They influence the Rhinelanders to such an extent that they began to massacre local Jewish communities.
The medieval city blossoms into one of Germany's principal towns. The increased power of the church, represented by the cathedral begun in 1248 is matched by growing commercial strength. An independent city III 1475, and part of the Hanseatic League, Cologne grows fat on trade with Bruges and London and imposes its own system of weights and measures on other northern towns.
Decline sets in with the collapse of the Hanseatic League and the growth of Lutherism. A bastion of the Catholic faith, Cologne resists the Reformation, and its Protestant craftsmen flee to other towns. The Thirty Years' War (1618-48) devastates the land, although neutrality saves the city from destruction. The 18th century brings peace but also French domination.
In 1813 Napoleon is driven back across the Rhine into France, and the Congress of Vienna hands the Rhineland to Prussia. However, the area remains a hotbed of unrest until Wilhelm of Prussia defeats the French in 1870, taking Alsace and Lorraine.
After World War I, at the Versailles Peace Conference, Marshal Foch pushes for an independent Rhenish Republic under French supervision. Rhenish separatists, among them the Mayor of Cologne, Konrad Adenauer, stage a coup d'etat on June I, 1919. They declare a republic which lasts only a few hours, until Clemenceau, under Anglo-American pressure, sends orders to break it up. The effects of the Third Reich are longer lasting.
Hitler marshalls troops in the Rhineland in 1936, delivering a triumphant speech in Cologne cathedral. In May 1942 British bombs devastate the town. By 1945 the population has fallen from 800,000 to 40,000, but within 15 years the city is rebuilt.
Things to see and do in Cologne Germany
For a taste of the Rhineland's mixture of the practical and the romantic, the serious and the humorous, there's nowhere better to begin than Cologne. And in Cologne the starting point is inevitably the cathedral (Dam). After the devastating bombardments of World War II, it was one of the few buildings left standing, defiantly dominating the city. Today, amid Cologne's shining rebuilt prosperity, elevated on a terrace like a somewhat haughty dignitary, the cathedral occupies a position that has been sacred since Roman times. Around A.D. 50, it was the site of the Temple of Mercurius Augustus. The first Christian church was built there in the 4th century by Bishop Maternus.
Progressively expanded over the next few centuries, the church began to burst at its seams in the 13th century when thousands of pilgrims flocked to Cologne to view the shrine containing the relics of the Three Kings. In 1248 the church was replaced with a cathedral conceived on a gigantic Gothic plan. Work went on for 300 years and then halted for lack of funds, with 121 the steeples still un-built.
The church remained that way for another 300 years until, at the urging of the young German Romantics and nationalists, work was resumed and the steeples completed in 1880.
Those steeples are the first thing you see of the cathedral, the first thing you see of Cologne, in fact. They complete the largest façade 200 feet wide, 515 feet high (61 m. by 157 m.) of any church in Christendom. Inside, the true architectural glory of the cathedral is its choir, a magnificent example of 13th century Gothic intensity, its slim, almost delicate lines forming a. Striking contrast to the massiveness of the whole edifice.
Very impressive in their natural elegance, set on the pillars of the choir, are the statues of Christ and Mary flanked by the apostles, sculpted by Master Arnold, one of the building's original architects.
The cathedral's richest treasure, looking itself like a basilica, is the gold Dreikonigenschrein (Shrine of the Three Kings) behind the high altar. The bones of the Three Kings were brought by Friedrich Barbarossa's chancellor, Reinald von Dassel, from Milan in the 12th century. Nikolaus von Verdun was commissioned to design this masterpiece of the goldsmith's art. Begun in 1181, it took 40 years to complete. The solid gold figures include the kings and prophets of the Old Testament along with scenes of Christ's baptism and the adoration of the Kings.
Another highly prized work is Stephan Lochner's splendid 15th century Dombild, a triptych to the right of the choir, celebrating the patron saint of Cologne Ursula, Gereon and the Three Kings. On the left side of the choir is the fine 10th century Gerokreuz (Gero Cross), named after Archbishop Gero who commissioned this movingly sim pie crucifixion. It is the earliest example of a Byzantinestyle sculpture appearing in Western Europe. In the Sakramentskapelle is the beautiful Milan Madonna, sculpted around 1280, with the colour, crown and sceptre restored in the last century.
Appropriately enough, next door to this formidable Christian monument, in the Romisch Germanisches Museum, is the delightfully pagan Roman tribute to Bacchanalian pleasure, the Dionysos Mosaic. One of the few nice things to have happened in Cologne during World War I I was the discovery of this marvellously well preserved work in the course of digging an air-raid shelter. The museum in which it is now housed was built around the mosaic's original site, once the floor of a prosperous 3rd century Roman wheat merchant's dining room. Dionysos is the Greek name of the fun-loving god the Romans called Bacchus. You can see him leaning tipsily on an obliging satyr while around him other satyrs and nymphs cavort and make music.
The reconstruction of Cologne and car hire in Germany
The post war reconstruction of Cologne has generally been a boon for the reorganization of its museums and particularly the Rhineland's most important art gallery, the Waljraf Richartz Museum. Car hire in Cologne, Germany can be picked up from the airport. Situated on the Wallrafplatz a short walk southwest of the cathedral, the pleasant modern building is a triumph of imaginative lighting and display for an excellent collection of early Rhenish art and many fine examples of the great European painters Lochner, Durer, Cranach to name but a few.
Above the Wallraf Richartz in the same building is the Museum Ludwig, devoted to modern art Picasso, Dali, Klee, Kandinsky and Max Ernstbut it is perhaps most remarkable for the comprehensive American pop art collection. There is something especially pleasing about a building that houses both the exquisite, anonymous J 5thcentury Gothic Madonna with Pea Blossom and Claes Oldenburg's lusty Giant Soft Swedish Light Switch.
For just a hint of what the old town of Cologne used to look like, go back to the river, to the tiny Austadt between the Gross St.
Martin church and the Deutzer bridge. There, around the old Fischmarkt, along the Salzgasse and across the Eisenmarkt (Ironware Market), you can find miracles of survival and restoration of houses dating back to the 13th and 14th centuries. Now a thriving, renewed neighbourhood of restaurants, antique shops, art galleries and apartments with attractive gardens, the lively atmosphere helps you imagine what it was like in the good old days.
But Cologne also has a bouncing, bustling present attested by the gleaming, pedestrians only commercial area along the Hohe Strasse southwest of the cathedral. Reflecting its taste for things French, the town offers plenty of outdoor cafes. Some of the most agreeable are around Am Hof where you can linger over a delicious pastry and coffee while contemplating. The delightfully kitschy dwarfs . and inquisitive tailoress of the Heinzelmiinnchenbrunnen (Heinzeldwarfs Well), sculpted in 1899.
To round off the church scene, you might like to look in on the Antoniterkirche (on the Schildergasse), the main church of the small Protestant community, and admire Ernst Barlach's 1927 sculpture Der Trauernde Engel (the Mourning Angel)to which he has given the features of his fellow artist Kiithe Kollwitz. The best of the city's Romanesque churches, indeed one of the most delicate in the Rhineland, is the St. Aposteln west of the Neumarkt on the Mittelstrasse.
The area is decorated with blind arcades and graceful galleries. But perhaps the most moving of Cologne's ecclesiastical edifices is the Madonna in den Triimmern (Madonna in the Ruins), the modern chapel built out of the rubble of the old Gothic St. Kolumba church on Briickenstrasse. World War II bombardments left standing only the stump of a tower and part of one outer wall. Amazingly, a statue of the Virgin Mary also emerged unscathed. Hence the name of the chapel, which Gottfried Bohm designed in the 1950s, artfully integrating modern simplicity with the Gothic remains. Here you'll get a true feeling of the city's history of pain and recovery.
On the western side of the Alter Markt is the proud old Rathaus or Town Hall. Its elegant Renaissance pillared loggia is as warm and inviting as the administrative extension of its modern Spanischer Bau is cold and forbidding. From the Rathaus, the Judengasse, once the main street of the medieval Jewish quarter, takes you to the Giirzenich, home of historic merriment. Cologne's most important secular Gothic building and practically the only one to survive into this century was designed as a dance hall for the city government and its honoured guests, including the occasional Habsburg or Hohenzollern. The original building, constructed in 1441, was damaged by fire in World War II. Rebuilt, it is still the most prestigious venue for Carnival balls, banquets and concerts, the perfect Gothic complement to the cathedral.
Excursions along the Rhine
No visit to Cologne is complete without a trip along the Rhine. You could take a train south to Bonn, and return downstream by boat; or take a leisurely cruise upstream to Mainz, along the most scenic part of the river. Bonn Not many people take Bonn seriously as the capital of Germany - least of all the Germans themselves. This is as much a tribute to its quiet serenity as a complaint about its lack of dynamism. But Bonn does have a modest charm, rather a nice surprise for the seat of government of such a busy, purposeful, selfconfident nation.
To get a feeling for the atmosphere in which the country conducts its official business, start at the complex of government buildings between the Rhine and Adenauerallee. The Bundeshaus, the parliament, offers multilingual guided tours when not in session. There's a fine view of the Siebengebirge (Seven Hills) across the river from the public restaurant on the 30th floor of the Abgeordnetenhochhaus (Deputies' Building).
You can change gears with a restful stroll at the other end of the Adenauerallee, around the old trees of the Hofgarten. This leads back to the university, housed in the elegant Baroque residence designed for the high living elector of Cologne, Joseph Clemens, by Louis XIV's architect Robert de Cotte. It was in the elector's private chapel here that a bright 16year-old schoolboy named Ludwigvan Beethoven performed his first music.
Bonn's sunny Baroque style can be appreciated in the graceful Rathaus (Town Hall) with its balustraded outside staircase, very much the centre of the quiet city basking in its 18th-century dream. The shopping area, like Cologne's blocked off from traffic, keeps things in the subdued mode.
Beethoven was born in Bonn in 1770 and his birthplace, the Beethovenhaus, at Bonngasse 20, has been preserved as a museum, proudly claiming the largest and most valuable collection of Beethoven memorabilia. It includes one of the grand pianos he played towards the end of his life and the acoustical instruments he used to combat his increasing deafness. The best of Bonn's museums is the Rheinisches Landesmuseum, outstanding for its Rhenish painters with some fine examples of the Cologne School.
But the stars are undoubtedly the Neanderthal Man and Cromagnon Couple. Old Neanderthal, 50,000 years old in fact, was found by workmen In a quarry near Dusseldorf in 1856. His remains include the top of his skull and 16 other bones, enough for anthropologists to determine that he was 5 feet 4 inches tall and 60 years old when he died. The Cromagnon man and woman, date back to 10,000 B.C.
Rhine Valley Germany and airport car hire
If you hire a car from an airport in Germany you can take your time to explore and look around the Rhine Valley.The Rhine Valley that people dream about is the part betwen Koblenz and Mainz. This is where the mountains of the Hunsriick on the west and the Taunus and the RheingauGebirge on the east come right down to the river forming a narrow valley of steeply terraced vineyards and pine forests guarded by castles and towering rocks, where myth and history mingle inextricably with the Nibelungs, medieval war and piracy, and romantic idylls.
The dreams begin just south of Koblenz, at Stolzenfels, high above the river. Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia started rebuilding the 14thcentury castle, sacked by the French in 1689, at the height of the German Romantic movement when the nation was lovingly reconstructing its past. His Koblenz architects gave it the full treatment turrets and crenellated battlements, funny little arches, giddy external staircases leading nowhere in particular, half -hidden rosé windows under knobby minarets all integrated into a fairytale natural setting of paths winding past gurgling brooks, of waterfalls among the pine trees, and shrubbery to break the fall of anyone accidentally cast into the dry moat.
Just before St. Goal', on the other side of the river, you will see Burg Thurnberg, better known as Burg Maus, coupled in popular imagination with Burg Katz (Cat) further south, directly opposite St. Goar. Katz was built at the end of the 14th century by Count Johann von Katzenclnbogen to snatch away the river tolls that previously went to Mau . St. Goal itself has a splendid castle ruin, the Burg Rheinfels, built by an earlier equally rapacious Katzenelnbogen in 1245. Louis XIV's troops' rampage through the Rhineland left it unscathed, but in 1797 morc French troops reduced it to the picturesque ruin you see today.
Across the river is the myth laden rock of Lorelei, the siren that inspired Heinrich Heine's celebrated poem. Riidesheim is perhaps the best known of the Rhineland's wine villages. Certainly its Drosselgasse has the liveliest collection of taverns and wine cellars of the region.
Long a commercial and cultural centre, Cologne has witnessed the nation's growth from earliest Roman times through medieval prosperity to its present state of comfortable stability. It has been home to a number of famous people: in the 16th century Peter Paul Rubens, the painter of exuberantly fleshy nudes, grew up among the burgers' stout wives. About 70 years later, in 1642, Maria de Medici, the wife of Henry IV of France, died here in exile; her heart is buried in the cathedral. The composer of Orpheus in the Underworld, Offenbach, was born here in 1819.
Cologne car hire Germany
The best way to explore Cologne is to book a hire car from the airport in Germany before you travel.Cologne's site on the Rhine is of prime importance. The old city was founded on the left bank, the new industrial centre on the right (Deutzer) bank.
It is the ideal starting place for a visit to the Rhine Valley, land of mists and towering rocks, terraced vineyards and avenues of poplars, Gothic churches and ruined castles, of every poetic image dear to the romantic side of the German character. But it's also coal barges, express trains and juggernaut lorries, cement works and power plants. Phoenix/like, Cologne arose after World War II from a rubble strewn desert to the proud, businesslike city of today. For now, as in centuries past, Rhinelanders settle down to their romantic dreams only after a hard day's work.
History of Cologne
A Brief History 1000750 B.C. Celts settle on the west bank of the Rhine, Germanic tribes occupy the east. In 72 B.C. the Germanic king Ariovistus crosses the Rhine with 15,000 troops and conquers part of Gaul. Gallic leaders call on the Romans for help and Caesar defeats Ariovistus in 58 B.C., driving the Germans back across the Rhine. Three years later the Gallic left bank is declared a Roman Protectorate. In 38 B.C., Augustus's general Agrippa brings a Germanic tribe, the Ubii, across to the left bank, and establishes the settlement of Oppidum Ubiorum.
Julia Agrippina, wife and murderess of the Roman Emperor Claudius, renames her birthplace Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensis, shortened later to Colonia. The Roman Rhineland suffers under invading barbarians, first the Alemanni who conquer Cologne, later the Burgundians, who are in turn defeated by the Huns. Turmoil continues with wars between the Alemanni and the Franks; the latter achieve supremacy under Clovis, who introduces Christianity. At the beginning of the 9th century, Charlemagne establishes a Christian European empire and builds his imperial palace on the edge of the Rhineland at Aachen. Cologne, already a bishop's see, becomes an archbishopric.
The Rhineland becomes a major recruiting centre for the Crusades to rescue Jerusalem from the Infidel. At Easter, 1096, Peter the Hermit arrives in Cologne with thousands of French eager to fight for the cause. They influence the Rhinelanders to such an extent that they began to massacre local Jewish communities.
The medieval city blossoms into one of Germany's principal towns. The increased power of the church, represented by the cathedral begun in 1248 is matched by growing commercial strength. An independent city III 1475, and part of the Hanseatic League, Cologne grows fat on trade with Bruges and London and imposes its own system of weights and measures on other northern towns.
Decline sets in with the collapse of the Hanseatic League and the growth of Lutherism. A bastion of the Catholic faith, Cologne resists the Reformation, and its Protestant craftsmen flee to other towns. The Thirty Years' War (1618-48) devastates the land, although neutrality saves the city from destruction. The 18th century brings peace but also French domination.
In 1813 Napoleon is driven back across the Rhine into France, and the Congress of Vienna hands the Rhineland to Prussia. However, the area remains a hotbed of unrest until Wilhelm of Prussia defeats the French in 1870, taking Alsace and Lorraine.
After World War I, at the Versailles Peace Conference, Marshal Foch pushes for an independent Rhenish Republic under French supervision. Rhenish separatists, among them the Mayor of Cologne, Konrad Adenauer, stage a coup d'etat on June I, 1919. They declare a republic which lasts only a few hours, until Clemenceau, under Anglo-American pressure, sends orders to break it up. The effects of the Third Reich are longer lasting.
Hitler marshalls troops in the Rhineland in 1936, delivering a triumphant speech in Cologne cathedral. In May 1942 British bombs devastate the town. By 1945 the population has fallen from 800,000 to 40,000, but within 15 years the city is rebuilt.
Things to see and do in Cologne Germany
For a taste of the Rhineland's mixture of the practical and the romantic, the serious and the humorous, there's nowhere better to begin than Cologne. And in Cologne the starting point is inevitably the cathedral (Dam). After the devastating bombardments of World War II, it was one of the few buildings left standing, defiantly dominating the city. Today, amid Cologne's shining rebuilt prosperity, elevated on a terrace like a somewhat haughty dignitary, the cathedral occupies a position that has been sacred since Roman times. Around A.D. 50, it was the site of the Temple of Mercurius Augustus. The first Christian church was built there in the 4th century by Bishop Maternus.
Progressively expanded over the next few centuries, the church began to burst at its seams in the 13th century when thousands of pilgrims flocked to Cologne to view the shrine containing the relics of the Three Kings. In 1248 the church was replaced with a cathedral conceived on a gigantic Gothic plan. Work went on for 300 years and then halted for lack of funds, with 121 the steeples still un-built.
The church remained that way for another 300 years until, at the urging of the young German Romantics and nationalists, work was resumed and the steeples completed in 1880.
Those steeples are the first thing you see of the cathedral, the first thing you see of Cologne, in fact. They complete the largest façade 200 feet wide, 515 feet high (61 m. by 157 m.) of any church in Christendom. Inside, the true architectural glory of the cathedral is its choir, a magnificent example of 13th century Gothic intensity, its slim, almost delicate lines forming a. Striking contrast to the massiveness of the whole edifice.
Very impressive in their natural elegance, set on the pillars of the choir, are the statues of Christ and Mary flanked by the apostles, sculpted by Master Arnold, one of the building's original architects.
The cathedral's richest treasure, looking itself like a basilica, is the gold Dreikonigenschrein (Shrine of the Three Kings) behind the high altar. The bones of the Three Kings were brought by Friedrich Barbarossa's chancellor, Reinald von Dassel, from Milan in the 12th century. Nikolaus von Verdun was commissioned to design this masterpiece of the goldsmith's art. Begun in 1181, it took 40 years to complete. The solid gold figures include the kings and prophets of the Old Testament along with scenes of Christ's baptism and the adoration of the Kings.
Another highly prized work is Stephan Lochner's splendid 15th century Dombild, a triptych to the right of the choir, celebrating the patron saint of Cologne Ursula, Gereon and the Three Kings. On the left side of the choir is the fine 10th century Gerokreuz (Gero Cross), named after Archbishop Gero who commissioned this movingly sim pie crucifixion. It is the earliest example of a Byzantinestyle sculpture appearing in Western Europe. In the Sakramentskapelle is the beautiful Milan Madonna, sculpted around 1280, with the colour, crown and sceptre restored in the last century.
Appropriately enough, next door to this formidable Christian monument, in the Romisch Germanisches Museum, is the delightfully pagan Roman tribute to Bacchanalian pleasure, the Dionysos Mosaic. One of the few nice things to have happened in Cologne during World War I I was the discovery of this marvellously well preserved work in the course of digging an air-raid shelter. The museum in which it is now housed was built around the mosaic's original site, once the floor of a prosperous 3rd century Roman wheat merchant's dining room. Dionysos is the Greek name of the fun-loving god the Romans called Bacchus. You can see him leaning tipsily on an obliging satyr while around him other satyrs and nymphs cavort and make music.
The reconstruction of Cologne and car hire in Germany
The post war reconstruction of Cologne has generally been a boon for the reorganization of its museums and particularly the Rhineland's most important art gallery, the Waljraf Richartz Museum. Car hire in Cologne, Germany can be picked up from the airport. Situated on the Wallrafplatz a short walk southwest of the cathedral, the pleasant modern building is a triumph of imaginative lighting and display for an excellent collection of early Rhenish art and many fine examples of the great European painters Lochner, Durer, Cranach to name but a few.
Above the Wallraf Richartz in the same building is the Museum Ludwig, devoted to modern art Picasso, Dali, Klee, Kandinsky and Max Ernstbut it is perhaps most remarkable for the comprehensive American pop art collection. There is something especially pleasing about a building that houses both the exquisite, anonymous J 5thcentury Gothic Madonna with Pea Blossom and Claes Oldenburg's lusty Giant Soft Swedish Light Switch.
For just a hint of what the old town of Cologne used to look like, go back to the river, to the tiny Austadt between the Gross St.
Martin church and the Deutzer bridge. There, around the old Fischmarkt, along the Salzgasse and across the Eisenmarkt (Ironware Market), you can find miracles of survival and restoration of houses dating back to the 13th and 14th centuries. Now a thriving, renewed neighbourhood of restaurants, antique shops, art galleries and apartments with attractive gardens, the lively atmosphere helps you imagine what it was like in the good old days.
But Cologne also has a bouncing, bustling present attested by the gleaming, pedestrians only commercial area along the Hohe Strasse southwest of the cathedral. Reflecting its taste for things French, the town offers plenty of outdoor cafes. Some of the most agreeable are around Am Hof where you can linger over a delicious pastry and coffee while contemplating. The delightfully kitschy dwarfs . and inquisitive tailoress of the Heinzelmiinnchenbrunnen (Heinzeldwarfs Well), sculpted in 1899.
To round off the church scene, you might like to look in on the Antoniterkirche (on the Schildergasse), the main church of the small Protestant community, and admire Ernst Barlach's 1927 sculpture Der Trauernde Engel (the Mourning Angel)to which he has given the features of his fellow artist Kiithe Kollwitz. The best of the city's Romanesque churches, indeed one of the most delicate in the Rhineland, is the St. Aposteln west of the Neumarkt on the Mittelstrasse.
The area is decorated with blind arcades and graceful galleries. But perhaps the most moving of Cologne's ecclesiastical edifices is the Madonna in den Triimmern (Madonna in the Ruins), the modern chapel built out of the rubble of the old Gothic St. Kolumba church on Briickenstrasse. World War II bombardments left standing only the stump of a tower and part of one outer wall. Amazingly, a statue of the Virgin Mary also emerged unscathed. Hence the name of the chapel, which Gottfried Bohm designed in the 1950s, artfully integrating modern simplicity with the Gothic remains. Here you'll get a true feeling of the city's history of pain and recovery.
On the western side of the Alter Markt is the proud old Rathaus or Town Hall. Its elegant Renaissance pillared loggia is as warm and inviting as the administrative extension of its modern Spanischer Bau is cold and forbidding. From the Rathaus, the Judengasse, once the main street of the medieval Jewish quarter, takes you to the Giirzenich, home of historic merriment. Cologne's most important secular Gothic building and practically the only one to survive into this century was designed as a dance hall for the city government and its honoured guests, including the occasional Habsburg or Hohenzollern. The original building, constructed in 1441, was damaged by fire in World War II. Rebuilt, it is still the most prestigious venue for Carnival balls, banquets and concerts, the perfect Gothic complement to the cathedral.
Excursions along the Rhine
No visit to Cologne is complete without a trip along the Rhine. You could take a train south to Bonn, and return downstream by boat; or take a leisurely cruise upstream to Mainz, along the most scenic part of the river. Bonn Not many people take Bonn seriously as the capital of Germany - least of all the Germans themselves. This is as much a tribute to its quiet serenity as a complaint about its lack of dynamism. But Bonn does have a modest charm, rather a nice surprise for the seat of government of such a busy, purposeful, selfconfident nation.
To get a feeling for the atmosphere in which the country conducts its official business, start at the complex of government buildings between the Rhine and Adenauerallee. The Bundeshaus, the parliament, offers multilingual guided tours when not in session. There's a fine view of the Siebengebirge (Seven Hills) across the river from the public restaurant on the 30th floor of the Abgeordnetenhochhaus (Deputies' Building).
You can change gears with a restful stroll at the other end of the Adenauerallee, around the old trees of the Hofgarten. This leads back to the university, housed in the elegant Baroque residence designed for the high living elector of Cologne, Joseph Clemens, by Louis XIV's architect Robert de Cotte. It was in the elector's private chapel here that a bright 16year-old schoolboy named Ludwigvan Beethoven performed his first music.
Bonn's sunny Baroque style can be appreciated in the graceful Rathaus (Town Hall) with its balustraded outside staircase, very much the centre of the quiet city basking in its 18th-century dream. The shopping area, like Cologne's blocked off from traffic, keeps things in the subdued mode.
Beethoven was born in Bonn in 1770 and his birthplace, the Beethovenhaus, at Bonngasse 20, has been preserved as a museum, proudly claiming the largest and most valuable collection of Beethoven memorabilia. It includes one of the grand pianos he played towards the end of his life and the acoustical instruments he used to combat his increasing deafness. The best of Bonn's museums is the Rheinisches Landesmuseum, outstanding for its Rhenish painters with some fine examples of the Cologne School.
But the stars are undoubtedly the Neanderthal Man and Cromagnon Couple. Old Neanderthal, 50,000 years old in fact, was found by workmen In a quarry near Dusseldorf in 1856. His remains include the top of his skull and 16 other bones, enough for anthropologists to determine that he was 5 feet 4 inches tall and 60 years old when he died. The Cromagnon man and woman, date back to 10,000 B.C.
Rhine Valley Germany and airport car hire
If you hire a car from an airport in Germany you can take your time to explore and look around the Rhine Valley.The Rhine Valley that people dream about is the part betwen Koblenz and Mainz. This is where the mountains of the Hunsriick on the west and the Taunus and the RheingauGebirge on the east come right down to the river forming a narrow valley of steeply terraced vineyards and pine forests guarded by castles and towering rocks, where myth and history mingle inextricably with the Nibelungs, medieval war and piracy, and romantic idylls.
The dreams begin just south of Koblenz, at Stolzenfels, high above the river. Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia started rebuilding the 14thcentury castle, sacked by the French in 1689, at the height of the German Romantic movement when the nation was lovingly reconstructing its past. His Koblenz architects gave it the full treatment turrets and crenellated battlements, funny little arches, giddy external staircases leading nowhere in particular, half -hidden rosé windows under knobby minarets all integrated into a fairytale natural setting of paths winding past gurgling brooks, of waterfalls among the pine trees, and shrubbery to break the fall of anyone accidentally cast into the dry moat.
Just before St. Goal', on the other side of the river, you will see Burg Thurnberg, better known as Burg Maus, coupled in popular imagination with Burg Katz (Cat) further south, directly opposite St. Goar. Katz was built at the end of the 14th century by Count Johann von Katzenclnbogen to snatch away the river tolls that previously went to Mau . St. Goal itself has a splendid castle ruin, the Burg Rheinfels, built by an earlier equally rapacious Katzenelnbogen in 1245. Louis XIV's troops' rampage through the Rhineland left it unscathed, but in 1797 morc French troops reduced it to the picturesque ruin you see today.
Across the river is the myth laden rock of Lorelei, the siren that inspired Heinrich Heine's celebrated poem. Riidesheim is perhaps the best known of the Rhineland's wine villages. Certainly its Drosselgasse has the liveliest collection of taverns and wine cellars of the region.
Labels: Cologne car hire Germany
posted by The Car Hire Guy at
08:54
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home