St. Cecilia's
A pure twelfth-century Romanesque hall — the museum's largest exhibit.
Raimond Spekking — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Raimond Spekking — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Raimond Spekking — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Raimond Spekking — CC BY-SA 4.0
Those moved by craft and age: art and history lovers find here one of Germany's purest hours. Fans of interactive museums or modern art should head elsewhere — Cologne has plenty.
Cologne prides itself on twelve great Romanesque churches, war-scarred and restored — this museum inhabits one, and is the style's loveliest introduction. If it takes hold, continue to nearby St. Gereon and St. Ursula.
The Rautenstrauch-Joest museum of world cultures shares the complex and a combined ticket — freshly presented ethnography. Together they make two and a half hours across two utterly different worlds.
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The Schnütgen is a double treasure: one of Europe's great medieval art collections, displayed inside the twelfth-century Romanesque church of St. Cecilia — vessel as old as contents, the hall itself the exhibition's largest piece. A century ago the priest Alexander Schnütgen gathered thousands of objects that churches were discarding, rescuing an entire artistic memory: painted wooden sculpture, fine ivories, stained glass, church gold and silver, manuscripts. The presentation is modern and calm, leaving the works their silence, with natural light from the church windows part of the experience. This is a connoisseur's museum, not a crowd's: one concentrated hour among beauty of rare kind, steps from the main shopping street and Neumarkt station.
A pure twelfth-century Romanesque hall — the museum's largest exhibit.
Madonnas and saints in original colour — cathedral carving at its height.
Fine ivories and church metalwork — a millennium's craft in quiet cases.
Cäcilienstrasse 29, 50667 Cologne