The Rhine crossing
Four minutes over the full river.
The cable car opened on the twenty-sixth of April, nineteen fifty-seven, days before the federal garden show began, linking the exhibition grounds in the Rheinpark on the right bank with the zoo and the Flora on the left. It was the first cable car in Europe to cross a river, and when the show ended it simply stayed on as a fixture of the city. The ride is short and unembellished: nine hundred and thirty-five metres in about four minutes, in one of forty-four small cabins, straight out over the full width of the Rhine with the cathedral and the old town towers away to the south. There is no commentary, no guide and no intermediate station, and that is part of the charm — a piece of nineteen-fifties transport still doing exactly what it was built to do. In July twenty seventeen the running gear of one cabin came off the rope and the line stopped in mid-air; sixty-five passengers were brought down by ladder and helicopter without serious injury, and the whole installation was inspected and overhauled before it reopened. The season runs from about mid-March to early November, with extra runs in the Christmas period.
Four minutes over the full river.
The far station opens onto a big park.
Riehler Strasse 180, 50735 Cologne
The two views have little in common. The tower gives you the city from above and from a fixed point; the cable car gives you the river itself, its traffic and both banks unrolling while you move slowly across. For the best value buy a one-way, walk around the Rheinpark on the far side, and come back on foot over the Zoobruecke in about twenty minutes.
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