Not London! Köln Roman dig & Praetorium (big post)

It had somehow escaped my notice that Köln was a Roman settlement. This explains a lot about why I love it so much. 


So, the usual story: Romans came along and settled near a river, the city got bigger and developed over time, and with development comes building. And in Köln it seems like anywhere you start to build, you hit Roman remains. 


While we were there, there was an open air dig very close to the Rathaus, which seemed to be a complex of at least a couple of houses (the info board was in German so I couldn't follow the whole thing):

 

On our last day in Köln I also visited the Praetorium, which is housed in a building near this dig. The term Praetorium originally referred to a general's tent within an encampment, and the term then carried over to have an administrative meaning for the headquarters of a governor or emperor. 


This is a photo from inside the Praetorium but sadly I failed to write down when it was taken. Post WW2 maybe. 

Artefacts inside the Praetorium:

 

 

      


The site:

And finally, in the Praetorium building there was a section of the Roman sewer system to walk down.

Not London! Old St Alban, Köln

Old St Alban was one of the many, many Romanesque churches in Cologne (see previous posts, and yes alright it's twelve Romanesque churches, but even I can get a bit bored with them), but the structure there today dates from the 1490s (bell tower) and the 1890s (the façade).


It was bombed heavily during the war and has been left as it is today as a monument to the people who died during the bombing.


There's a couple of small statues (3rd picture), which can be slightly creepy depending on the light when you approach the church...


You can't usually go inside but there's ample spaces between the bars to get some striking angles.

 

Not London! Köln Rathaus (city hall)

The city hall in Cologne is Germany's oldest. It's on the site of the Roman Praetorium (that's coming in a later post; the Praetorium was pretty big). Different parts of the Rathaus date from between the twelfth and twentieth centuries. Most of my pictures are of the the tower, which dates from the early 15th century, and the loggia (a gallery or corridor at ground level), which dates from the late 16th.  


Tower:

Loggia:

More detail:

Not London! St Andreas, Köln

St Andreas is a Romanesque church (gosh, last week German, this week Heritage Studies, it's like I'm going back in time) very near the Cathedral. Just over the road, in fact. 


...what, you thought I might have done something like taking a picture to illustrate that? Hahaha, no, that didn't occur to me until right now. 


Anyway, here's a quick screencap I did from Google Maps (the A is St Andreas, the cross-shaped building is the Cathedral):

I didn't get to go inside the church, but the outside is pretty impressive anyway. It was consecrated in 974 and rebuilt in the 13th century. It's one of the 12 Romanesque churches of Cologne (I could spend a week in Cologne just on the churches), but actually combines Romanesque and Gothic elements. And being really huge, obviously.