History of Cologne

Cologne is in the state of North Rhein-Westphalia, situated along the river Rhine between Dusseldorf and Bonn, and is Germany’s fourth largest city with over 1.8 million inhabitants. Founded by the Romans, Cologne it is the oldest of the major German cities and is still characterised by its 2,000-year history. Today, the city is renown as the gay capital of Germany, and stands as one of the nation’s media, communications, cultural, tourism and business hotspots.

Roman Cologne

Cologne was an important Roman military garrison on the left bank of the river Rhine in the 1st century, and was made a Roman colony in the year 50 AD by Emperor Claudius, who named it Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensis after his wife, Agrippina. Cologne’s archbishops later ruled a strip of land on the west bank of the Rhine as princes of the Holy Roman Empire and acquired great power.

Throughout the Dark Ages, the city gradually became a powerful Catholic archbishopric, and construction on its famous cathedral began in 1248, just 40 years before the archbishops lost power to the guilds at the battle of Worringen. By the mid-13th century, the archbishops’ constant feuds with the lay citizenry resulted in the transfer of their residence to nearby Brühl, then to Bonn.

The Middle Ages to the mid 20th century

Cologne, as a self-governing state after 1288, became a free imperial city in 1475, and as a member of the Hanseatic League, continued to prosper as a commercial center until the 13th century. Its decline was hastened by the Jewish expulsion in the 15th century, and the restrictions imposed on Protestants in the 16th century, making the city a staunchly Catholic one. The French later invaded Cologne in 1794, leading to the official secularising of the archbishopric in 1801. With the Congress of Vienna ending the occupation of the French, Cologne was subsumed into Prussia in 1815.

The construction of the cathedral that began in 1248 was left unfinished, and was not to be completed until five centuries later by the Prussians. During the 19th century, Cologne went under rapid industrialisation and continued to flourish as an industrial centre and main transit port and depot of northwestern Germany. Its economy was robust enough to ride out the economic downturns between the two world wars, but could do nothing against allied bombing.

Post-WWII Cologne

In the decades following World War II, enormous effort went into clearing the ruins and rebuilding the city. Architect and urban planner Rudolf Schwarz designed Cologne’s reconstruction masterplan in 1947, which called for the construction of several new thoroughfares through the downtown area, especially the Nord-Süd-Fahrt (North-South-Drive).
 
Plans for new roads had already evolved under the Nazi administration, but the actual construction became easier in times when the majority of downtown lots were undeveloped. The destruction of famous Romanesque churches like St. Gereon, Great St. Martin, St. Maria im Capitol and about a dozen others in World War II meant a tremendous loss of cultural substance to the city.

Modern day Cologne

Today, Cologne is powered by the automotive and pharmaceutical industries, but from the old Roman towers to the modern opera house, there’s much to see from every period of the city’s 2,000-year history. It’s a bustling modern city, with magnificent architecture, splendid museums, superb theatre and concert performances, excellent dance clubs, and enormous department stores.