Cologne is one of the most visited cities in Germany, thanks to its magnificent cathedral. When you arrive at the central train station, the Cologne Cathedral will surely be the first thing you notice, both for the beauty of the building and, above all, for its enormous size.
But in this post I won’t talk about the cathedral, which you can explore in this article, because the things to see in Cologne are truly countless, starting with its most beautiful museums.
Are you in Cologne, or planning to visit this wonderful German city?
Would you like to take a little tour of its most important museums?
Then you’re in the right place!
I know, many people think of museums as boring, dusty places. In truth, the museums of Cologne will take you on a journey through the world of art, but also through the history and traditions of this city. Cologne is much more than a shopping town with a beautiful cathedral: here you can range from ancient art to contemporary art, passing through the delightful chocolate museum too.
Just think, there’s even a wonderful Roman museum just a few metres from the cathedral. Inside you’ll find one of the most beautiful mosaics that has come down to us, along with many other finds that will take you on a real journey through time. But I don’t want to spoil anything, because you’ll find all these details in the paragraphs below.
So, shall we discover the 5 museums in Cologne you absolutely can’t miss?
Let’s go!
1 – Museum Ludwig in Cologne
Museum Ludwig in Cologne stands right behind the famous cathedral and is one of the most important museums of modern and contemporary art in Europe. The works inside range from the twentieth century to today, and you’ll spot names like Picabia, Duchamp, Braque, Klee, Modigliani, Dalí and many others, as well as one of the richest Picasso collections in the world.
A curious fact: the museum was born from the donation of Peter and Irene Ludwig, chocolate entrepreneurs and passionate collectors. Today it holds the third-largest Picasso collection on the planet, after Paris and Barcelona, and the largest Pop Art collection outside the United States.
But that’s not all.
The Pop Art section is also very beautiful, with works by Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. The hyperrealist statue by Duane Hanson, on the other hand, really startled me!
Which are the finest works?
Among the pieces in this Cologne museum, some works by Kupka struck me deeply, but the main reason for my visit was to see one particular painting up close.
It’s Five Women on the Street by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Have you ever heard of it?
Let me tell you about it!
In this painting by Kirchner a modern city is portrayed, with all its suffering and, at the same time, its detachment. The five women depicted, perhaps prostitutes, are rendered with acid, jarring colours and violent brushstrokes. The setting is barely sketched: you can make out the wheel of a car and the outline of another figure on the right, perhaps a building.
I recommend looking at it carefully, because in this painting you’ll find many elements typical of German Expressionism. This artistic movement drew its inspiration from deeply painful situations, reproducing them with sad and desperate details.
In this painting at Museum Ludwig, for instance, the five women have nothing feminine about them. Their bodies are drawn with sharp, angular shapes, and they give you no sense of human warmth.
Why this choice?
The idea behind these works is that truth is not easy to uncover: it always lies beyond appearances. It cannot be grasped with the eyes, but only through a deeper knowledge of the human soul.
So it hardly matters whether the five figures are prostitutes or wealthy women. Here the criticism is aimed entirely at the bourgeois society of the time, which the German Expressionists held in little regard.
Something you might not know: the painting was created in Berlin in 1913, and in 1937 the Nazis seized it as an example of “degenerate art”. Only in 1947 did it return to Cologne, thanks to the collector Josef Haubrich, and today it’s one of the museum’s crown jewels.
2 – The Roman-Germanic Museum in Cologne
As a Roman myself, just as had happened with the Roman museum in Lyon, I wondered whether it was really worth visiting yet another Roman museum.
After all, don’t I have enough Roman remains back home?
Needless to say, I couldn’t resist: I went in and discovered something essential. The ancient Romans never stop amazing you, even in the distant lands of Germania Inferior.
Want to know why?
First of all, the setting.
The Roman-Germanic Museum of Cologne (the Römisch-Germanisches Museum) is built on great columns that clearly allude to a temple of ancient Rome. Inside are gathered finds from prehistory to the Merovingian era and, among the most precious of them, you can admire the beautiful Dionysus mosaic, dating to around 220-230 AD. This work is simply fantastic: just think, it measures about 70 square metres and is made of over a million coloured tesserae in natural stone, glass and clay.
I had already been left speechless by a mosaic before, in front of one of the masterpieces at the National Archaeological Museum of Naples. But I had never found any as beautiful as this in Germany.
Another lovely section is devoted to an important collection of ancient glass: vases, cups and bottles that once graced the tables of the nobility and still show off their decorations. Some are truly precious, because it is extremely rare to find them intact, given how fragile glass is.
Something you might not know: the museum grew out of the walls of an ancient Roman villa, whose mosaic was discovered by chance in 1941 during the digging of an air-raid shelter. The building was then inaugurated only in 1974, more than thirty years later. It immediately reminded me of our Capitoline Museums, which still contain the Temple of Jupiter.
One important note before you go: the historic site on Roncalliplatz, right next to the cathedral, is closed for a lengthy renovation. Part of the collection is temporarily on show at the Belgisches Haus, at Cäcilienstraße 46, not far from Neumarkt. The Dionysus mosaic, however, remains in its original location and is not accessible for now, so check the official website before your visit.
3 – The Cologne Cathedral Treasury
Among the things to see in Cologne, you absolutely can’t forget to step inside the beautiful cathedral and discover the Cologne Cathedral Treasury (the Domschatzkammer). Housed in the ancient medieval vaults beneath the church, it holds priceless masterpieces of goldsmithing, reliquaries, liturgical vestments and an important part of the city’s history.
Why is it so important?
You should know that Cologne was heavily bombed by the Allies during the Second World War, and it’s truly a miracle that we can still visit this cathedral today.
Like Notre-Dame in Paris, sadly damaged by the recent fire, Cologne Cathedral is the most visited monument in Germany, with around 6 million visitors every year.
What is there to see?
The real jewel, though, is not in the treasury but in the heart of the cathedral, behind the high altar: it’s the Shrine of the Three Kings (the Dreikönigsschrein), one of the most beautiful reliquary shrines I’ve ever seen.
This work of goldsmithing will leave you speechless, both for its size and for the accuracy of its details. It’s about 2.2 metres long and 1.5 high, with an oak core covered in sheets of gold and gilded silver, enamels and around a thousand gems, pearls and ancient cameos. It’s considered the largest reliquary in the Western world.
Something you might not know: the shrine was made between about 1180 and 1225 by the great goldsmith Nicholas of Verdun and his workshop, who worked on it for over forty years. Inside, it is said to hold the relics of the three Magi, which is why Cologne became one of the most important pilgrimage destinations in Europe.
Want to know what really fascinated me about this place?
If you decide to take on the “climb” and go up to the top of the Cologne Cathedral towers (533 steps, I promise you!), you’ll probably realise it too: the view from up there is absolutely breathtaking.
Want to know more?
You can read all about it in this article on Cologne Cathedral.
4 – The Chocolate Museum
A chocolate museum in Cologne?
Is it really one of the finest museums to see in the city?
Yes, the chocolate museum may not be an artistic attraction, but it can teach you a great deal.
Its German name is Schokoladenmuseum, and it was founded by the confectionery entrepreneur Hans Imhoff. You may find it hard to believe, but since it opened on 31 October 1993 it has enjoyed huge success: it welcomes over 650,000 visitors a year, among the highest figures in all of Germany.
Why visit it?
The chocolate museum of Cologne stands at the Rheinauhafen, the elegant harbour on the Rhine not far from the cathedral, and it will take you on a particularly sweet journey into the world of chocolate. Through its rooms you’ll discover its ancient origins, when the Maya and the Aztecs called it “the food of the gods”, how it’s produced today and how it gradually conquered the European and world markets.
Inside there are many interactive installations that make the visit even more enjoyable, especially if you’re travelling with children. And of course there’s no shortage of tastings: since 2006 the museum’s partner has been Lindt, and you can enjoy wafers dipped in a three-metre-high chocolate fountain, filled with 200 kilos of chocolate… yum!
Something you might not know: next to the museum there’s also a small tropical greenhouse with real cocoa trees, so you can see where it all begins.
5 – The National Socialism Documentation Centre
The complete opposite of the chocolate museum: here you’ll find very little that’s pleasant. The National Socialism Documentation Centre of Cologne (the NS-Dokumentationszentrum) is housed in the EL-DE Haus, the former headquarters of the city’s Gestapo, and it will probably send shivers down your spine.
In an apparently ordinary building lie some of the saddest stories of Cologne and of Germany as a whole. In the basement is a terrible prison where thousands of people were detained, many of whom never came out alive.
Why visit it?
First of all, because it is our duty to keep the memory of these atrocities alive, so that they never happen again.
The most striking part is the inscriptions on the cell walls: there are around 1,800 of them, in every European language, from Russian to Spanish, with the testimonies of prisoners recounting fragments of their own stories. Those unjustly imprisoned, those who were pregnant, those who were frightened and those who were resigned, those about to be shot, those little more than boys and those already old: pieces of lives broken, or perhaps miraculously spared from death, in one of the most horrific periods in human history.
I felt a great sense of anguish, which stayed with me even after I’d left.
On the upper floors there is a permanent exhibition on life under Nazism: how school, work and repression were organised. Here too you’ll find testimonies that are more or less shocking.
Want to know what truly shook me?
The hardest part was learning about the forced sterilisation carried out on women deemed “unfit”: it included all those whose families had cases of hereditary illness.
But if it’s so distressing, why go?
Despite the far-from-pleasant atmosphere, the Documentation Centre of Cologne is worth visiting, especially if you have children or teenagers with you. I believe we should never forget the atrocities of war: the world must never fall into such errors again, and we must all be aware of what happened.
Something you might not know: the prison was saved by chance. A teacher had himself secretly locked in the basement together with a photographer, who documented the wall inscriptions one night. It was the publication of those photos that saved the cells and, in 1981, turned them into a memorial.
To think that Cologne, a lively, beautiful and colourful city, was the backdrop to such events truly broke my heart.
Practical information for visiting the museums of Cologne
In Cologne you’ll find many other interesting museums, such as the Kölnisches Stadtmuseum, the city museum that traces its history through the centuries; the Farina Duftmuseum, where you can discover the story of the famous “eau de Cologne”; or the Kolumba, the refined diocesan museum that weaves together ancient and contemporary art. There are many others, but the ones I’ve told you about are my favourites.
Here’s some useful information, up to date but always worth double-checking on the official websites:
- Museum Ludwig: open Tuesday to Sunday, 10am-6pm (until 10pm on the first Thursday of the month), closed on Mondays. Full ticket around 12 euros, reduced 8, free up to age 18. It’s at Heinrich-Böll-Platz, between the cathedral and the Rhine.
- Roman-Germanic Museum: the historic site is closed for renovation; part of the collection is on show at the Belgisches Haus (Cäcilienstraße 46). Check opening hours and tickets before you go.
- Cathedral Treasury (Domschatzkammer): open daily, ticket around 6-8 euros. The cathedral is free, but the tower climb and the treasury are paid separately.
- Chocolate Museum: open almost every day; full ticket around 15-17 euros (a bit more at weekends), reduced for children.
- National Socialism Documentation Centre (EL-DE Haus): closed on Mondays, full ticket around 4.50 euros, reduced 2, free for under-18s. It’s at Appellhofplatz, right in the centre.
A tip to save money!
If you plan to visit several museums and to move around the city a lot, I recommend the KölnCard: from about 9 euros it gives you unlimited public transport for 24 hours and up to 50% off many attractions and museums. Be careful, though: it doesn’t include free entry, only discounts, so it’s only worth it if you’re planning several visits.
And if you now feel like continuing your journey through German museums, I’ll be waiting for you in Berlin, in front of the masterpieces of the Gemäldegalerie.
