1. City walk and visit to the Kölnisches Stadtmuseum

with Sascha Pries
How can a city’s history be told using emotions, and how can a former department store be transformed into a museum? Curator Sascha Pries provides answers to these and many other questions about the permanent exhibition of the Cologne City Museum, which opened in March 2024. The museum’s concept is based on eight emotional key questions such as “What do we love?” or “What are we afraid of?”. The tour also takes you to the surrounding Kolumba quarter. Situated near the Cologne’s shopping streets and the Cathedral, this historically significant district now combines retail spaces with several cultural institutions.

2. Visit to the churches of St. Gereon and St. Ursula

The destinations of this excursion are two of the oldest and most beautiful churches in hillije Kölle, the holy city of Cologne. The Romanesque Basilica of St. Ursula, located in the heart of the city, has been a place of pilgrimage for centuries, attracting visitors from all over the world. Its history goes back to Late Antique (Roman) Cologne, making it one of Germany’s oldest continually used churches. The basilica’s Golden Chamber, the largest ossuary north of the Alps, is regarded as one of Cologne’s most popular sights. St. Ursula is a patron saint of Cologne, and the legend of her martyrdom along with 11,000 female companions is alluded to in the city’s coat of arms.

The Basilica of St. Gereon is dedicated to another patron saint of Cologne. The decagonal dome space at the centre of the basilica was developed out of a Late Antique oval building which was erected, according to legend, at the behest of St. Helena, mother of the Roman emperor Constantine, in honour of the martyrs of the Theban Legion who were put to death here. After Florence Cathedral and Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, St. Gereon possessed the largest dome of its day (1227). Also of particular interest are the Treasury and the monumental altar painting honouring St. Sebastian – a collaborative work by the Baroque painters Johannes Hulsman and Johann Toussyn, both of Cologne – which includes a bird’s-eye view of the city in its natural setting (1635).

3. Cologne Cathedral; tour over the roofs

with Dominik M. Meiering
Exclusive to CODART: on Sunday, priest Dominik Meiering will guide us on the roof of the Cologne Cathedral. The Gothic cathedral of today has a long tradition as Cologne’s episcopal church. It rises over a site with more than 2,000 years of construction history. While this is a complete Gothic cathedral, not every part of the building dates from the Middle Ages. The building was finished in the age of the Industrial Revolution, supported mainly by the royal house of Prussia as a symbol of German unity. Nowhere is this clearer than during a guided tour of the cathedral’s roofs. Where we would perhaps have expected a historic wooden truss roof, we are surprised to find a filigree steel construction older than the Eiffel Tower. The tour takes visitors high above the city to unknown tower spaces containing storage rooms and cathedral workshops, opening up one of the most spectacular views Cologne has to offer.

4. Cologne Cathedral; tour through the excavations

with Msgr. Markus Bosbach
Exclusive to CODART: on Sunday, priest Markus Bosbach will guide us through the depths of the Cologne Cathedral, all the way down to the foundations of the South Tower. The Gothic cathedral of today has a long tradition as Cologne’s episcopal church. It rises over a site with more than 2,000 years of construction history, which has now been opened up by archaeological research. After almost 70 years of intensive investigation, the excavations beneath Cologne Cathedral currently rank as one of Germany’s largest church digs. The extensive spaces beneath the floor of the cathedral afford a glimpse into a mighty archive of buried cultural heritage, including over 2,000 wall and foundation fragments, street cobbles, flooring, pits and graves, all framed by the mighty foundations of the Gothic cathedral.

5. Modern and Contemporary Art at Museum Ludwig

with Rita Kersting
During this tour with Rita Kersting, Deputy Director of the Museum Ludwig, we will learn about the Museum Ludwig, its history and its current orientation. The foundations for the museum were laid in 1976 when husband and wife Peter and Irene Lud­wig donated 350 works of contemporary art to the City of Cologne. Museum Ludwig also integrates the collection of Josef Haubrich, featuring outstanding works from the early years of the twentieth century.

The Mu­se­um Lud­wig collection covers key positions in modernism from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present day. With one of the most comprehensive collections of Pop Art outside the United States, the third-largest Pi­cas­so collection in the world, one of the most important collections of Ex­pression­is­m and a significant photography collection, Mu­se­um Lud­wig is one of the most renowned museums for art of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Besides that, the museum continually and consistently expands its collection of contemporary art.