After the dusty (and rather sweaty) hike back out from Burg Eltz, we dropped the car off at the Köln airport and headed into the city--our last stop--to find our hotel (and its attached brewery, which is 160 years old--Köln is Kölsch country, don't you know!). While I got cleaned up a bit, Mike got to have his complimentary beer--as they said when we checked in, they give you a bottle of beer "instead of chocolate on the pillows, since we're a brewery..."--and then we headed straight to dinner, which, on this particular evening, was rather low key. I'd set us up with traditional food at Em Krützche, which was smack in the middle of the touristy section on the Rhine bank, but was chock-full of locals (wooo!), a rather lot of whom were really charming old people (dressed to the nines, and no menu necessary!). This time, the sauerbraten was for me--that stuff is so good--but here it came with applesauce and spätzle (usually brick-heavy, but was quite nice at Em Krützche). Mike went for the pork knuckle, with some excellent sauerkraut (with paprika--how tasty!) and fried potatoes. Ohhhh, German food, how I love you!*
Day two began with brunch(ish) at Peters Brauhaus, a beer hall full of absolutely lavish dining areas and serving traditional food. (No, I cannot get enough, thank you very much.) Mike and I shared a plate of fried camembert with cranberries and fried parsley (which is weirdly good!), and then he opted for a kielbasa with sauerkraut and mashed potatoes, while I went for the Decke Bunne met Speck--broad beans in a savory, sour-creamy, bacony sauce, topped with 3 giant additional slabs of bacon. (I'm salivating just writing that.) After brunch, we headed toward Köln's main draw: the incredible cathedral, the foundation stone of which was laid (over the foundations of several previous churches, of course) in 1248; was under more-or-less constant construction until around 1530, when interest and money ran out, and when it was enclosed with a makeshift roof (but retained its relics and treasures); and whose construction was finally resumed in 1842, and completed not even 40 years later, according to the original design, in 1880! (And then damaged during WWII--Köln was bombed an astounding 262 times--and is still being repaired.)
Whoa. It's not small.
I mean. Just look at those buttresses!
Gargoyles, gargoyles everywhere!
Holy smokes, the front. There are no words. Sheesh.
Model of the finials at the very, very tops of those towers. Unbelievably huge.
Obligatory nave shot...so tall...
I read somewhere that there are over 10,000 square meters of stained glass in this cathedral, but can't really confirm that anywhere else. Nonetheless, there's a lot of glass here, and some of it is old. This window is from the 16th century...
..and these are from the 13th and 14th.
The mosaic floors aren't nearly so old--19th century--but they are extensive and crazy ornate.
Other than its size, the cathedral is also known for this: the Shrine of the Three Kings, supposed to contain the bones of the three Magi from the Christmas story. This thing is huge--about 43 inches wide, 60 tall, and 87 long (110 by 153 by 220 cm)--and is absolutely smothered in gold and jewels, cameos and filigree, and scenes depicting the history of salvation (I'm not kidding--is that complex enough for you, for an artifact finished in about 1220??).
After a quick jaunt through the impressive treasury (no photos allowed inside, natürlich, but there's a bit about it here in German, complete with a nifty little virtual tour as well), we discovered that A) there was a fantastically huge (3000 square meters!) archaeological area underneath the cathedral, and B) that we had just enough time to get tickets to take a tour of it...and so down we went! Cue our third tour in German, which wasn't quite as clear for us as the first two (you try discussing very specific architectural and ecclesiastical terms in a second language...!), but was more than clear enough for us to understand what we were seeing, and to get a handle on how utterly rich and complex the site is. (As is probably obvious by now, there is MAJOR ARCHITECTURAL-HISTORY NERDERY AHEAD. You've been warned.)
Yup, it's a crazy jumble of footings and sarcophagi and walls and things down there, but our guide knew basically everything there was to know about it all. That hole in the center is a Roman drain (probably 3rd or 4th century); the cracked wall at the back is from the massive 9th-century cathedral (hereafter, "Old Cathedral") which was built around the year 800 and torn down in order to build the current one, and the flat stone at the bottom left is the threshold from the same; and the sections on the sides with mixed types of stones are the Gothic foundations of the current cathedral.
So these sarcophagi from the Old Cathedral are fascinating and all, but what's really interesting are those faintly red and green tiles underneath. Get this: those tiles are depicted in an illustration in the Hilinus Codex (a manuscript written around 1015), which contains the only original graphical representation of the Old Cathedral in its entirety, in existence. Amazing.
This is also pretty amazing: that well is from the 4th century; the floor laid over it (oopsie...) is from the 7th; the wall behind that is from the 9th; the column in the back from the 11th; and those stairs on the left from the 14th. So...many...layers... Brain...can't...keep up...
That hole in the ground is a 1st-century Roman villa, complete with painting on the spotlighted wall, and the column footing in the upper left is from the 5th century, but its context remains undetermined.
Gorgeous carving found in the excavations.
Man, there was so much more down there, but as we were to discover later, we weren't done underground just yet! However, for the time being, it was time to emerge into the light again.
On the old market square is the Rathaus tower, originally from the early 15th century. As with nearly everything else in this part of the country, it was heavily damaged during WWII (in fact, just assume that every building I talk about here was damaged to some degree), but has been entirely restored.
The back side of the Rathaus (or, I guess, technically the front), with loggia from the 16th century. Couldn't get a better shot, as the entire Platz in front of this building is completely torn up for excavations...but that means Köln will definitely be worth a return trip sometime in the future, as they're building a massive new museum incorporating said excavations, as well as artifacts and archaeology from the city's ancient Jewish Quarter.
We had a little time to kill before dinner, so we decided to walk back to the Old Market square and have a drink. Aperol Spritz for me (woo! so nice and refreshing!) and some of the local brew for Mike. Fun fact: as soon as you sit down, the staff in the traditional Brauhauses just assume that you are there for beer, and instead of waiting for you to order the next round, they just keep bringing half-pints until you place your coaster over your glass to signal that you're done. It's a pretty smart system, really.
As we were waiting on the bells in the Rathaus tower to chime (they ring 4 times a day, and reputedly, one of their tunes is the Can-Can song, but we never heard it, to our complete dismay!), we spotted some additional tourists. Don't you know these guys have interesting stories...
Dinner on night two--Mike's actual birthday, to be exact--was at the genuinely wonderful Ox & Klee, a tiny, cozy, one-Michelin-star restaurant with very nice people serving up some delectable and astonishingly gorgeous food. As I was trying to be a normal person (for once), I didn't take any photos of the food, but I did get one of the menu they gave us--which they'd all signed with a birthday greeting for Mike. Loved that place.
Mmmmmmmmm to everything.
Day three began in a very similar fashion to the one before: brunch at Sion Brauhaus, the site of a brewery and tavern since 1318 (!), where I tried out the local asparagus with ham and hollandaise sauce (ohhhhh, asparagus season, how I adore you!!), and my dear husband had a quarter-meter of their house-made pork sausage...which, of course, came with potatoes fried with bacon and onions, and a sort of creamed sauerkraut, also made with bacon. His plate(s) contained enough food for the both of us, in all honesty, and so I was forced to help him out just a little. (It was such a burden.) It was a good thing, then, that our next destination involved walking around for a bit: we headed to the city's famed Roman-Germanic Museum, which I'd starred on my map, but really hadn't understood how spectacular the place's collections would be.
This is basically the first thing you see when you walk in: the 15-m-high (or 48 ft) grave monument of Lucius Poblicius, a Roman Legion veteran, built around 40 AD.
That monument stands over this: the Dionysos mosaic, from the floor of a 3rd-century Roman villa. When this was discovered in 1941 during excavation for a bomb shelter, it was so well preserved that the city decided to build this museum around it. It's not the biggest mosaic floor we've seen, but it's definitely the most complete, and is genuinely spectacular.
First-century pottery made in Köln.
Partial mosaic and cut-stone floor from the part of Köln first settled by the Romans--pre-50 AD.
I may have gone a little overboard with pictures of the glassware collection here, but it was just so big! And pretty! And full of miniature little vase things, which I love. This is most likely from the 1st century.
Köln became famous for its "snake-thread" design; these tiny bottles are from about the 2nd century.
I found this completely astounding: there's a tiny relief of a person on the bottom of this bottle (2nd or 3rd century, local production).
Another locally-produced bottle from the 1st or 2nd century. (So many pretties!)
The first thing here that might catch your eye is that rather large bronze mask of Oceanus...but the second thing should really be that MER-PANTHER ON THE LEFT. (Awesome.)
This is the first-century gravestone of a gladiator, whom they think won his freedom after a series of victories. (Whoa.)
Gorgeous little inscribed golden rings, worn by the Roman elite. The one in the middle says "beloved."
SUPER FASCINATING: this is a 6th-century grave monument inscribed in Latin, but with the spelling affected by the local Germanic pronunciation. So neat.
Trust me when I say there were about a gajillion other grave monuments equally as beautiful/intricate/fascinating as the one or two above, and I have many, many photos to prove it. I'm just trying to have a little self-control here, seeing as how the glassware got out of hand.
Anyway.
They also have a smallish, but really impressively preserved, collection of Iron Age, Bronze Age, and Neolithic artifacts, as well as even a few snippets from the Paleolithic and Mesolithic. Here, a piece of bone carved with a horse's head, from probably between 8000 and 4000 BC.
Also amazing: arch from a Roman city gate, from the mid-1st century, inscribed with the initials of Köln's Roman name--CCAA (Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensium).
Next--as if we hadn't had enough ancient history for the day--we discovered the Praetorium, the remaining foundations of the palace of the Imperial Roman governor of Cologne.** Originally built in about the year 50, this thing was massive to begin with, and went through several building phases over the next 300-ish years. The thinking is that its size (3500 square meters!) and Rhine-front position were intended to demonstrate the power and wealth of the Roman empire to tribes to the east of the river. They've found all manner of interesting artifacts down there, and there's even access to the extraordinarily well-preserved Roman sewers nearby. (All of this lies roughly between the cathedral and the Rathaus--underground Köln is gigantic and spectacular, and even in doing my research for this trip, I had no idea all of this was there!)
They weren't kidding: the Praetorium was huge.
This was the central (round) room of the palace, and is thought to have been over 25 meters high, fancily decorated and topped with a cupola.
First-century Roman sewer! These were used as storage cellars in the Middle Ages and as bomb shelters during WWII. Talk about solid construction...and all sorts of interesting bits of pottery and glassware from the 10th through 18th centuries were found during their excavation.
Also found nearby was this slate fragment with no fewer than three different Hebrew inscriptions from before 1349. (Basically, it was a medieval notepad.) The Jewish community in Köln was established by 321 AD and lasted until its near-total destruction by the Nazis during WWII, and while there's a small community reestablished there today, the history is both incredibly tragic and tremendously rich. Sadly, while we were there, the 11th-century Mikvah (ritual bath) and remaining parts of the medieval Jewish Quarter (including walls of the14th-century synagogue and hospital) were closed to visitors...adding to the list of reasons to go back.
After the Praetorium, we decided to make a quick dash over to the 13th-century Romanesque church of St. Andreas, as I'd read somewhere that it had a partially-10th-century crypt (which it did, containing the sarcophagus of the philosopher St. Albergus Magnus [1193-1280] and some super-old frescoes). In the sanctuary, we also found this thing:
Sixteenth-century reliquary of the Maccabees, supposed to contain the bones of the seven Old-Testament Jewish martyrs and their mother. (I never stop being impressed by these massive and elaborate works of medieval goldsmithery, despite the fact that they're far more common than I would have imagined.)
...and this thing! Which is a 16th-century "blood fountain," over (...or into?) which blood from 11,000 martyred virgin followers of St. Ursula is supposed to have flowed. (Medieval church legends = weird and macabre, but oh-so-fascinating!.)
Next, since it was on our way back to the hotel and we'd walked past it about a half-dozen times, we ducked into the church of Great St. Martin (built between 1150 and 1250), another of Cologne's twelve Romanesque churches, this one located right along the Rhine and about two minutes away from the cathedral. (Ancient architectural riches, anyone? Köln is chock-full.)
Again, terribly damaged during WWII bombings, but beautifully reconstructed. The inside is rather austere, but very, very peaceful.
The exterior is just monumental.
And then, on our way back towards the hotel before dinner, we happened upon a rather striking place, serving the same purpose as the Kaiser Wilhelm church in Berlin, but with a bit more subtlety (it's on a quiet side street): the former church of St. Alban, which the city left as a bombed-out shell to serve as a memorial for those who died during both World Wars.
View from the street...
...and peering through the gates.
And then--the last stop of the day, I promise! "How do you have time for all of this in one day?" you might be asking, but a couple of these places are smallish--Mike spotted one more giant church tower. So of course we went to explore that, and found yet another remarkable place in Köln: the church of St. Mary's in the Capital, so named due to its location on the site of the Roman Capitoline temple.*** This place is positively cavernous, people, and I only wish we'd had more time to wander around.
St. Mary's beautiful little cloister garden...
...one side of which has modern apartments over it.
Main entrance. To my utter shame, I wasn't able to get a photo of the apse end of this building, which is just spectacular. (Originally built between 1040 and 1065, this church--like so many others--was expanded over the following 600-ish years, which is how you end up with Romanesque arches, various Gothic trimmings, and a Renaissance choir screen. So. Amazing. This building was one of the worst-damaged historical sites in the city after World War II.)
Obligatory nave shot.
Check out that incredible choir screen underneath the organ! (It's from about 1520, which is just shocking to me--I assumed it was much newer.)
See? Cavernous. This place keeps going behind the organ and choir screen.
Sorta tucked away in a corner was one of the more amazing things I've seen in and amongst the many, many old churches we've visited: this set of 5-meter-high oak doors, carved with crazy-intricate imagery and knotwork, made no later than 1065. (Pardon the weird angles: there was a gate in front of these things, and I was shooting through it.)
Best shot I could get of the whole thing was with my phone.
The doors were originally on the exterior, but were rather sheltered from the elements by another part of the building, which is how these things survived in this miraculous condition on the outside of the building through the 19th century. They were removed for restoration in 1925, hidden in various countryside estates during WWII for safekeeping, and finally set in their current place inside the church of St. Mary's in 1950. Srsly, LOOK AT THAT DETAIL. Unbelievable.****
Dinner on night three had all the makings of something spectacular: more one-star Michelin food, check, and a really great setting:
A 140-year-old water tower, Europe's largest when it was completed in 1872. Now it's been converted into a swanky hotel, with swanky restaurant at the top (and great views over the city).
Sadly...the service at Himmel un Äd was just about the slowest you can imagine: we didn't even receive our first course (of 8) until an hour after we'd arrived. And while the food was quite good, and really creative--there was sea-urchin hollandaise with local veal, how does one even think of that?--we just weren't up for how long everything took between courses. We ended up skipping the first of the two desserts and coffee and all its accoutrement, and were back at our hotel by about midnight-thirty. (Ugh. But at least the cheese trolley service and actual final dessert [various concoctions with rhubarb and local strawberries] were really, really good.)
Weirdly enough, day three began, on the insistence of my husband--it wasn't even my idea, can you imagine?!--with a second visit to the cathedral, this time for a guided tour of the interior. In German. It quickly became obvious that our previous tours in German had made us overconfident, because this time around, I probably only understood about 60% of what the guy was saying, and that was with all of the concentration I could muster. He was super nice and enthusiastic and extremely knowledgeable...but he was quite wordy, and talked fast, and not necessarily always in a straight line. We did, however, learn some new things this time around.
For instance, these tapestries were designed by one Peter Paul Rubens, and only hang for a couple of weeks during the year.
Something I did not notice at all, since I was straining my brain to the breaking point to try and keep up with what our guide was saying: all of the figures in the mosaic floor in the transept and crossing were holding other churches, or related church-building items. Mike pointed this out to me, and only later did I realize that I'd taken several photos of this phenomenon without thinking about it. This one's Hagia Sophia!
Can't read that writing around the border here at all, but here's a standard cathedral floor plan for you.
And this one--pardon the terrible angle, I was just trying to get the border--I think is holding a model of the Old Cathedral. How very meta.
Even if we weren't catching quite everything that was going on around us, we did get to enter the choir, which meant that we got a great view of these extraordinary stalls (from around 1310)...
...and a better view of the Shrine of the Three Magi, plus that enormous medieval high altar with its Carrara marble carvings, installed in 1322. (UNESCO says the altar's 4.6-meter [15-ft] monolithic slab of black limestone is "believed to be the largest in any Christian church". How's that for obscure trivia?)
And finally, one extra-gratuitous shot of the purty, purty arches and ceiling, just because.
I have to admit, it was a great relief to me to hear from Mike that he hadn't understood much during the tour, either. Whatever the case, everything we understood was quite interesting and was worth the time and money, although I'll suggest that if you're doing such a tour yourself and aren't at least fairly conversant in German, you might want to hold out for the English tour. Just sayin'.
After our tour, we headed back to our hotel to catch lunch in the attached brewery, Brauhaus zur Malzmühle. I went had potato cakes with some excellent veggies (hooray, broccoli!) and herbed fresh cheese on the side, and Mike finally tried out one of the local specialties, Himmel und Äd, which is bloodwurst served with fried onions, mashed potatoes, and applesauce. (Not my cup of tea, necessarily, but I figured he'd like it. I think he did.)
Ha, ha, look at that funny dialect! It's practically Dutch. (Which makes sense, 'cause Köln is about an hour's drive from the border of Belgium.)
And with that, we grabbed our bags, caught a taxi, and headed to the airport. People, I'm not going to kid you: I really like Germany. We've had nothing but good food and good experiences there, and seeing as how it's jam-packed with castles and schlösser and fortresses and tasty wine and sausages and nice people--and is the home of the only language I can even remotely get by in, other than my own native one--I fully intend to spend more time there in the near future. It's a delight.
Next up: well, I tried to crank out these last two posts in a hurry, as I'm headed to California tomorrow to meet up with Mike and to have some new adventures. So that'll be it!
*But I think you're trying to kill me. So tasty, but so heavy! But so, so tasty!
**While I am the first to admit that my husband has been a major influence on my love of travel, wine, and appreciation of nice things in general, I like to think that I've somehow managed to have an effect on his interest in (...or at least, tolerance of...) all things historical (and especially historical-architectural). And while he's always been tolerant of my constant need to see everything old, I keep trying to let him off the hook when we stumble upon these sorts of things--unexpected archaeology, yet more old churches, etc., etc.--but I think he might have some actual enthusiasm these days! HISTORY NERDS UNITE! WOOOO!
***As we were there nearly at closing time, no one mentioned to us that there was A) a Romanesque crypt, where B) you could see the ruins of said Roman temple, as well as the foundations of a church built on the same site in 690. Man, I HATE it when I'm quite literally right on top of something, and miss out on it entirely! Köln: we will see you again. Oh yes.
****I know, I know, I know...I shoulda been an art historian or architectural historian or something along those lines, but that was neither on my radar when selecting what to study in school, nor even remotely available to me at the very small university I attended, and so I never even got to dabble. Ah, well, I'd probably be equally as unemployed as I am now. I'd just be way, way better informed about these things that I just can't get enough of.
