It was hard not to note this quite punchy little sculpture number which depicts when Jesus rode into Jerusalem on his donkey. The inhabitants of the city lay palm fronds in his path (or psalm fronds if you’re Robert Jenrick) as a sign of veneration and love.
This little arrangement was made from limewood and dates to around 1520, being made locally in Cologne. The donkey comes from the Church of St. Kolumba and it was documented as being taken through the streets of Cologne as late as 1778. The church was unfortunately lost during the air raid bombings during the Second World War.
I do wonder how these things survived through the centuries as it’s not the easiest thing to store. I accept that it’s quite easy to move, but I wonder where churches have stored it over time.
And here are some images that AI has created to try and picture the scene back in the late medieval period.
It’s definitely fair to say that I was excited to discover a medieval religious art museum in a former church, so that’s another set of posts that will be occupying me all week. This is a sculpture made of oak that depicts the Virgin Mary and Jesus, with a suspicious amount of paint remaining which makes me wonder if it has been touched up somewhat.
Anyway, this was the new French influence where the Virgin Mary was looking in a caring manner towards the baby Jesus, rather than the previous more formal look that had been the norm. She’s holding an apple, but that’s rather for religious symbolism than what the child might have wanted to eat. The information panel at the museum notes that Mary is standing on a dragon, although I’m not sure that I would have realised that.
I’ve had AI have a play with it and I think this is probably a reasonable stab at how it looked. I’m impressed that it has pulled out the dragon thing to at least some degree, although the imagery is obviously wrong there.
The sculpture was likely once in a church and it has been dated to around 1270. It was likely made in Cologne, but the wider throne the sculpture sits on was likely changed in the later medieval period.
The Deutz Suspension Bridge, which was later renamed the Hindenburg Bridge in 1935, was once a pioneering feat of engineering that defined the Cologne riverfront. Completed in 1915, it was a self-anchored suspension bridge utilising massive eyebar chains rather than the wire cables common today. Its design was so influential that it served as the direct architectural inspiration for the ‘Three Sisters’ bridges in Pittsburgh and the Kiyosu Bridge in Tokyo. For decades, it provided a vital link between the Cologne city centre and the district of Deutz, carrying motor vehicles, trams and pedestrians across the Rhine.
The demise of the bridge was a dramatic and sub-optimal affair that occurred in the closing months of the Second World War. On 28 February 1945, while Cologne was under heavy Allied pressure and suffering from frequent air raids, the bridge unexpectedly collapsed into the Rhine. Unlike many other Rhine bridges that were intentionally demolished by retreating German forces to slow the Allied advance, the Hindenburg Bridge failed during urgent repair works intended to fix damage that had been sustained in previous bombings. The collapse was a catastrophic event that reportedly resulted in many civilian casualties, as hundreds of people were allegedly on or around the structure, with many fleeing the city, when the weakened chains finally gave way.
In the museum there is one of the rivets from the collapsed bridge, one of the many thousands that once held the structure up. If it hadn’t collapsed it would have been blown up by the retreating German army just a few days later, but without the huge loss of life. It’s a rather small survival from such a substantial structure, but it still tells the story of the disaster.
The ‘Eistüte’ or the Dropped Cone, is one of the city’s more whimsical pieces of public art, perched precariously on the corner of the Neumarkt Galerie shopping mall. Created by the legendary Pop Art couple Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, the sculpture was installed in March 2001. The inverted vanilla scoop is made of reinforced plastic and stainless steel and was designed to be a response to commercialism and the rather ubiquitous nature of the ice cream stand in the city. There’s something rather charming that Primark have moved in underneath it.
The museum noted that the butchers in Cologne were quite rebellious during the Middle Ages. They refused to sell meat by the weight and ignored many of the demands placed upon them by the authorities. The butchers held some significant power in the city, being one of the early guilds.
The set of sculptures in the above photo are from the city’s former meat hall. They were made after 1372 and there is a butcher on the left, then an ox led by a farmhand, a farmer and then the farmer’s wife dealing with the money. The Fleischhalle in which they were located was demolished in the early twentieth century, so that’s at least one building that the British didn’t bomb.
This is the public square above the Kölner Philharmonie, a concert hall that was opened in 1986. The design was apparently revolutionary, the hall has no columns, the sound is meant to be perfect and it has a near perfect room acoustic.
It all looks quite a nice place to stand, but there are security guards standing around it to keep people off it.
Those security guards are there to keep people off the square as anyone walking on it can cause noise disturbances for those in the concert hall. So, when performances are taking place, which seemed to be every time that I walked by, they have to pay staff to keep people away. Was this really the best way to design this?
The story of Brauhaus FRÜH am Dom begins in 1904, when Peter Josef Früh established a brewery and tavern in the shadows of the city’s cathedral. It has since become something of a tourist destination and it’s one of the largest brewery taps in the country. The buildings were badly damaged during the Second World War, but the cellars remained and they were able to rebuild relatively quickly.
I’d add now that this isn’t really entirely my thing, it’s a beer style that I don’t much rate in what feels like a pile it high sell it cheap type approach. That’s great and I wanted to experience it, but I was never sold on it. There were countless rooms leading off from each other, some looked like larger dining rooms but I was seated in this section which had a bit of character to it. Well, it was a bit dark anyway and I like that.
The place is huge and I was directed to a table by a slightly gruff, but not unfriendly, server. He took my order and only looked slightly annoyed that I checked in advance if I could pay by card. More on how the cash only model is falling away in Cologne in another post though, I won’t get distracted with that here.
The local beer style is Kölsch, a top-fermented ale that is finished with cold maturation like a lager. I was amused that the city’s museum states that the glasses are like this as the beer gets stale very quickly otherwise, which doesn’t really excite me in a drink. As a beer, it hasn’t burdened itself with flavour, taste or depth. But it’s cold and crisp.
The beer is served as 0.3 litres per glass as standard, they then mark off on the beermat how many drinks have been consumed. I went for two, even though that breaks my Untappd rule of rarely having the same beer twice in one place, just to add some excitement to the proceedings. I did the thing of putting the beermat on the top of the glass when I was finished.
The service was efficient and routine, I was quite content with the value of the whole arrangement. But, the service for others seemed a little more brusque, the server managed to have a slight argument with two of the four tables that he was serving. One of the tables was a group of American tourists who said they wanted to sit by the window and the server didn’t want them sitting by the window, but I quite enjoyed watching the awkward manner when he took the order with everyone being a bit annoyed.
The general reviews for the place are decent, although the service element gets just a 2/5 on Google which is really quite low. But it’s just such a high turnover place that I can see that the servers just want customers served quickly rather than have endless conversations with what mostly seemed like tourists.
The food was quite expensive so I limited myself to the beers and they have kept the price of those moderate. The cost of the two beers was €5 and the server didn’t try and charge a tip, which seemed a little unusual but perhaps he thought I looked grumpy. Numerous reviews mention that the servers have to give some of their tips to the kitchen, but perhaps they focus on those eating food rather than having two beers. I didn’t try and visit the toilet facilities, but it seems that the attendant expects payment for using them. Imagine JD Wetherspoon trying that….
It was an interesting place to visit, but it felt like a bit of a tourist trap to me rather than being anything authentic. For anyone serious about beer, there’s the relatively nearby Tipsy Monk bar which was operating to a very high standard of customer service and they also had the same Früh Kölsch beer on draft for those who want to try it.
The city’s history museum is located over four floors and I thought it was able to present Cologne’s heritage in an interesting manner. And that included the period in time when Cologne was under French occupation between 1794 and 1814. Although it might now have always felt inevitable that this period would come to an end, that’s a lengthy period when much about the city was changed. That included the introduction of waste collection, street lighting, religious freedom and also house numbers. There’s certainly something to be said for the Napoleonic code….
This street sign was from that period of French occupation and it dates to 1813. What was Gereonsmühlengasse became Rue Moulins Gereon, so no change of meaning, it meant something like St Gereon’s Mills in both languages. The street is still there today, although evidently the damage caused during the Second World War has given it something of a different look.
The city’s history museum was comprehensive and interesting, so there will be plenty of posts about this. Once again, the anticipation…..
These are remnants of the synagogue that was built in the city in around 1280. The Jewish community was first recorded in Cologne as early as 321, so this wasn’t some group of people who randomly turned up in the city.
The synagogue that was constructed was decorative and there was some sharing of stonemasons with Cologne Cathedral, an early inter-faith project going on. However, the Black Death took hold and in 1349, the citizens decided that this must have been the fault of the Jews, so they smashed up their synagogue. The city authorities were powerless to stop the violence, with many kills and tens of residential properties destroyed.
A small Jewish community reformed in 1369, and they must have been quite brave, but in 1424, the Council of Cologne expelled them permanently. It wasn’t until the end of the eighteenth century that the Jews were allowed to return once again.
The bits of stone that have been recovered during an archaeological dig are quite powerful in that sense that the Jewish community were likely quite positive when building the synagogue in 1280. But, the persecution of the Jews has been quite relentless in Cologne, not just with the Second World War, but also attacks on the newly reopened synagogue in 1959 and at the Jewish cemetery in 1983.
I’ve visited a fair number of museums during my time in Cologne (I’m writing this on my last night here and once again this bloody blog is behind) and I spent some considerable time in the cathedral, so I have several things to witter on about.
This cathedral has a complex history, although that is just about always the way with structures such as this. I found an online book about the history of the cathedral, so I have read in huge detail now about how the building came together. Hence why I mentioned the wittering that is to come.
Condensing that detail down, there has been a church of some sort here for centuries. Then, as is usual, there were substantial construction efforts and expansions during the medieval period when the finances were very favourable. Then, in 1528, construction work came to an end as the money ran out.
This little stop in construction work was not just for a brief moment, work was not started again to complete the building until the nineteenth century. Chunks of the religious infrastructure were destroyed over the centuries and when, in 1794, the French revolutionary troops reached the city, they burnt all the wood in the nave and turned the building into a grain storehouse.
The Prussians took over Cologne in 1815 and they wanted the cathedral finished. They didn’t take long to start planning and the funds were ready by 1823, although it took until 1840 for the work to actually start. There were no medieval plans remaining, so they had to start reworking what they had into a finished product.
And, in 1880, the work was completed and Cologne had its finished cathedral. Work was needed in the early twentieth century as the stone weathered so quickly, but all was well. Until there was a little issue with the Second World War. Although much of the city was destroyed, and the cathedral was damaged, the bulk of the building survived unharmed.
There is constant work going on to repair past damage and ongoing efforts to deal with the weathering of the stone. There’s a stone workshop on site and it’s said by the cathedral that the scaffolding will remain up somewhere on the site as there is constant work to do. One of the sayings in the city is “when Cologne cathedral is finished, the world ends”…. And that would be just typical for the cathedral authorities if they did ever finally complete the work and that happened.
