Cologne City Hall

Reputedly the oldest city hall in Germany, the Historisches Rathaus of Cologne has served the city's self-government for more than nine centuries, growing over time into a picturesque patchwork of building styles in the heart of the old town.

Its oldest documented parts reach back to the twelfth century, when Cologne's citizens asserted their independence from the archbishop, and construction continued in stages thereafter. A tall Gothic tower, added in the fifteenth century and lined with more than a hundred statues of figures from the city's history, rises over the surrounding lanes. In front of it stands the elegant Renaissance loggia, or Rathauslaube, built in the 1570s by Wilhelm Vernukken, whose arcaded stone screen is among the finest Renaissance works in the Rhineland.

Beneath and around the hall lies a deep archaeological layer. Excavations have revealed the Roman governor's palace, the Praetorium, and a medieval Jewish quarter with its ritual bath, the mikveh, evidence of Cologne's two thousand years as a major settlement. These finds are being incorporated into an archaeological quarter and museum around the building.

The Rathaus remains a working seat of government, so interior access is limited, but the exterior, the tower and the loggia can be admired freely from the square. A carillon in the tower plays several times a day. The hall sits between the cathedral, the old market squares and the Rhine, at the very centre of Cologne's medieval core, and forms a natural focal point for a walking tour that ties together the city's Roman, Jewish and merchant past. Its layered facades tell the story of a proud, self-confident trading city in stone.