The Golden Chamber
Walls of ornamentally arranged bones and gilded busts — nothing like it anywhere.
Raimond Spekking — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Jorge Franganillo — CC BY 4.0 · Armin Kleiner — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Frank Vincentz — CC BY-SA 3.0
St. Ursula is one of Cologne's twelve great Romanesque churches and home to the city's most famous legend: the tale of Ursula, the princess martyred here with her virgin companions — "eleven thousand virgins" in the legend's telling — who became Cologne's patroness, her eleven flames on the city's coat of arms to this day. The church's jewel is the seventeenth-century Golden Chamber: a small room without equal anywhere, its walls a mosaic of bones arranged in ornamental patterns and Latin words, above rows of gilded reliquary busts — a baroque confrontation with mortality that astonishes and chills at once, and is never forgotten. The church stands in permanent quiet near the station, and the visit is short — but whoever enters the Golden Chamber leaves with one of Europe's strangest memories.
Walls of ornamentally arranged bones and gilded busts — nothing like it anywhere.
The tale of Cologne's patroness, whose eleven flames mark the city's arms.
The venerable style without the cathedral's queues.
Ursulaplatz 24, 50668 Cologne
EigelsteintorburgThe Eigelsteintorburg is one of the few surviving gates of Cologne's medieval wa6 minutes walk4.6
Cologne Central StationCologne Central is among Germany's busiest stations, but what makes it striking 6 minutes walk3.8
Cologne's Medieval City WallIn the late twelfth century Cologne roughly doubled its area and threw around th6 minutes walk4.3
Cologne Cathedral TreasuryThe Cathedral Treasury is a small museum in stone vaults beneath the north side 7 minutes walk4.7
KreuzblumeThe Kreuzblume is a huge piece of stone standing on the square beside Cologne Ca7 minutes walk4.5Solemn more than frightening: the arrangement is sacred ornament meant as honour, not horror, and the room is small, lit and calm. The sensitive and young children may keep to the church itself — lovely on its own.
Most likely an old Latin copying slip turned 'eleven virgins' — or 'little Ursula' — into thousands, and the later find of a Roman burial ground fed the legend's number. Either way, the legend built the city's identity regardless of arithmetic.
Seven minutes' walk north of the cathedral: do the giant first, then this as its quiet opposite — enormity and crowds, then silence and strangeness. Continue to the Belgian quarter's restaurants if hunger strikes.