The arena shape
No seat more than forty metres away.
Cologne's principal concert hall opened in nineteen eighty-six, sunk into the ground immediately beside the cathedral to a design by the architects Busmann and Haberer. Inside it is an arena: the platform sits at the centre with an audience of about two thousand wrapped around it on every side, and hardly a seat is more than forty metres from the players. It is home to the Guerzenich Orchestra and to the West German Radio symphony orchestra. Its most famous feature is a design fault rather than a virtue. The roof of the hall is a public square, Heinrich-Boell-Platz, linking the cathedral to the Ludwig museum and the river, and footsteps crossing it turn out to carry into the auditorium and be audible during performance. The only remedy has been to have stewards close the entire square before every concert and every rehearsal, and that has gone on daily for forty years. The hall is not a sight you enter on an admission ticket: there are no regular public tours, and group tours are arranged in advance for a nominal fee. The practical way to see the inside is to attend a concert, and the programme is broad, with cheap seats and short lunchtime recitals among the options. It is two minutes from the cathedral.
No seat more than forty metres away.
The hall's roof and a city walkway.
Bischofsgartenstrasse 1, 50667 Cologne
Not realistically. There are no regular public tours, and the tours that exist are arranged by email for groups of twelve to twenty-five and depend on the rehearsal schedule. If you want the interior cheaply, look for a short lunchtime recital or the lowest evening price band โ the arena design means the view is decent from every direction.
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