Metropolis with Village Flair

You want entertainment? You got it: three per cent of the inhabitants of this one million-town are aged 18 to 35 and are enormously well served by the city’s cinemas (64), theatres (49), museums (36) and beer gardens (lots). Add to that Cologne’s status as a media hub (with three major television channels and the music channel VIVA), you’ll soon discover that this is the liveliest German city after Berlin.

But Cologne also attracts visitors thanks to the impressive remnants of a Roman and Roman Catholic past, most significantly in its giant cathedral, the Kölner Dom (www.koelner.dom.de). Founded by the Romans in AD 48 and a busy trading centre since the Middle Ages, Cologne once boasted the highest density of churches in Germany, many of which have since been converted into galleries, hotels or office buildings. Today, the city’s Catholic past is represented by no fewer than 12 Romanesque churches – but it’s the Dom that brings in the punters. Stunning when lit up at night, the Gothic Dom took six centuries to construct. Begun in 1248, it was only completed thanks to the modish fervour of the Romantic movement for medieval culture. Their 19th-century fund-raising activities saw the erection of the giant twin spires that today dominate the city centre. You can climb the hundreds of steps to the top for an overwhelming view of the city and its surroundings.

Having surveyed it from above, begin your stroll through the winding lanes of the Altstadt, with its numerous remains from the time of the Romans. There is always some excavation taking place here and wherever a new building is planned, historians and archaeologists are at hand to search the premises for new traces of Cologne’s busy past, some of which make it into the Römisch-Germanisches Museum (Roncalli Platz 4, +4922122124438) by the Dom, which documents the city’s Roman past. Nearby is Museum Ludwig (Bischofsgarten 1, +4922122126165) with a renowned collection of 20th-century art and, in the city’s medieval heart near the old town hall, the Wallraf-Richartz Museum/Fondation Corboud (Martinstrasse 39, +4922122121119) has a rich display of old masters.