Germany
Köln
A golden room walled in human bone, under the biggest gothic cathedral in Germany.
Everyone changes trains in Cologne and too few stay. They should. The cathedral is the most staggering gothic thing in Germany, and a short walk away is a church chamber lined floor to ceiling in human bone and gilded relics.
It is compact and on the river, an easy one or two nights of macabre between bigger cities.
Go when Winter, for the cathedral in low light. Skip Carnival unless you love crowds.
Haunt
What to See
Ossuaries, oddity museums, cemeteries and the properly strange.
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Golden Chamber, St. Ursula's Basilica
A baroque room with walls covered in human bones arranged into words and patterns, studded with gilded reliquary busts holding the supposed relics of St Ursula and her companions. Astonishing, and far emptier than it should be.
Best shot Bone-patterned walls and rows of reliquary busts in low light. Steady your hands.
- Quiet
- Adults only
-
Cologne Cathedral
Six hundred years in the building. Blackened gothic spires outside, the golden Shrine of the Three Kings inside, said to hold the Magi. Climb the tower if your legs allow. Mobbed by day, so come early or late.
Best shot Blackened spires against the sky with the river below, from Hohenzollern Bridge at blue hour.
- Touristy
-
Melaten Cemetery
A grand 19th-century garden cemetery on the site of a medieval leper colony, full of weeping angels and a famous stone Death holding an hourglass. A good long wander.
Best shot The weeping angels and the hourglass-bearing Death, under bare winter trees.
- Quiet
- Solo-friendly
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Kolumba Museum
An art museum built straight over a bombed gothic church, the old walls rising through the new. Spare and sombre.
- Quiet
Rest
Where to Stay
B&Bs, haunted old hotels, Victorian piles. No hostels, ever.
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Hotel Qvest
$$$$A neo-gothic former city archive turned design hotel, vaulted stone and pointed arches with modern furniture under century-old tracery. Quietly the best room in town.
- Quiet
- Adults only
-
Hotel im Wasserturm
$$$A hotel built inside a 19th-century water tower, curved brick and round corridors. Worth it for the strangeness.
- Quiet
Feast
Where to Eat & Drink
Candlelit cellars, dark bars, rooms with history in the walls.
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Früh am Dom
$$A cavernous brewhouse in the cathedral’s shadow, dark wood and vaulted cellars, endless small glasses of Kölsch from blue-aproned waiters. Big and boisterous with tour groups, which is half the fun.
- Touristy
- Party scene
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Shepheard
$$$A dim, done-properly cocktail bar for a nightcap away from the beer halls.
- Adults only
- Quiet
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