Everyday objects
Signs, clothes and toys across centuries.
Thomas Wolf, www.foto-tw.de — CC BY-SA 3.0 de · Raimond Spekking — CC BY-SA 4.0 · This image is a work by Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons user C.Suthorn. When reusing, credit me as described in the Licensing information below. I would appreciate being notified (wikimail, talk page, — CC BY-SA 4.0 · This image is a work by Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons user C.Suthorn. When reusing, credit me as described in the Licensing information below. I would appreciate being notified (wikimail, talk page, — CC BY-SA 4.0
A museum about Cologne itself: how it became a Roman colonia, then a rich medieval trading city, then an industrial one flattened in the war and rebuilt in a hurry. The exhibits are everyday things rather than treasures — shop signs, clothes, toys, propaganda material, and bottles of the scented water that carried the city's name around the world. The museum has moved. Its home was the Zeughaus, the city arsenal of sixteen hundred and six, until water got into the building in twenty seventeen and asbestos was found in the walls; it was emptied in twenty eighteen and stands empty still. The museum reopened in March twenty twenty-four inside a converted former fashion store on Minoritenstrasse, with a new approach built on themes and interactive stations rather than a chronological march. On the tower of the old arsenal there remains a golden winged car, placed there by the Cologne artist HA Schult in nineteen ninety-one and a landmark every local knows. The oddity is that the museum left and the car stayed, so plenty of visitors still head for the tower and only then discover that the collection is somewhere else.
Signs, clothes and toys across centuries.
An artwork on the arsenal tower since 1991.
Minoritenstrasse 13, 50667 Cologne
NS Documentation Centre (EL-DE Haus)The EL-DE House was the Gestapo's local headquarters in Cologne, and today it is1 minute walk4.6
Roman TowerThe Roman Tower is the best surviving piece of Cologne's Roman wall. Cologne was3 minutes walk4.3
St Gereon's BasilicaThe strangest in shape of Cologne's twelve Romanesque churches, and the reason i5 minutes walk4.6
Museum of Applied Arts CologneThe Museum of Applied Arts in Cologne is a museum about design: furniture, vesse5 minutes walk4.4
The Disch-HausThe Disch-Haus is an office and commercial building of 1930, among the foremost 6 minutes walk4.4To Minoritenstrasse 13. Many maps and listings still show the old Zeughaus, which was emptied in 2018 after water damage and asbestos and remains shut. The two addresses are about five minutes apart on foot, southward inside the old town, so the mistake costs you only a short walk.