Cologne

The first town on the site was Oppidum Ubiorum, founded in 38 BC by the Ubii, a Germanic people allied with Rome. In AD 50 the Romans made it a colony, Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensium, named after the emperor Claudius and his wife Agrippina, who was born there; it became the capital of the province of Lower Germany and one of the most important trading cities north of the Alps. In 321 Constantine approved a Jewish community there, and the Franks took the city in 462. Charlemagne made its bishop an archbishop in 795, and by the end of the 12th century the archbishops were among the seven electors of the emperor.

Pilgrims to the relics of the Three Kings made Cologne rich, and work on the cathedral began in 1248. After the Battle of Worringen in 1288 the city freed itself from its archbishops, and it was confirmed as a free imperial city in 1475, by then a major member of the Hanseatic League. The university was founded in 1388. France occupied the city from 1794, and in 1815 it passed to Protestant Prussia, which its Catholic people resented for generations. The cathedral was finally completed in 1880 as a national monument, and by the First World War the city had grown to 700,000 people. Konrad Adenauer was mayor from 1917 to 1933 and later the first West German chancellor.

Cologne endured 262 air raids in the Second World War, including the first thousand-bomber raid on 31 May 1942, and the Nazis deported or killed almost all of its 11,000 Jews. By 1945 the population had fallen by 95 per cent and the centre was called the world's greatest heap of rubble. Reconstruction, which lasted into the 1990s, restored the cathedral, the gates and the Romanesque churches amid a mixed post-war cityscape. The population passed a million again in 2009.

Carnival is the city's great collective ritual, the "fifth season". It opens at 11 minutes past 11 on 11 November, pauses for Advent and Christmas, and returns in force from Weiberfastnacht, the Thursday before Lent, through the Rose Monday parade. Its most celebrated carnival society, the Rote Funken, keeps alive the memory of the old free city's soldiers as a military parody. Cologne cultivates a fierce rivalry with Düsseldorf over carnival, football, ice hockey and beer.

The city has its own dialect, Kölsch, one of the very few city dialects in Germany, and its own beer of the same name, which leads to the joke that it is the only language one can drink. The Twelve Romanesque churches and the cathedral anchor a Catholic tradition, although only about a quarter of residents now belong to the Catholic Church, and the Central Mosque in Ehrenfeld, the largest in Germany, reflects the city's 90,000 people of Turkish origin. ColognePride is one of the biggest in Europe.

Cologne is a major centre for art and music. The Museum Ludwig and the Wallraf–Richartz Museum hold major collections, Art Cologne is regarded as the oldest art fair of its kind, and the Gürzenich Orchestra and the WDR Symphony Orchestra play in the Philharmonie. The broadcaster WDR helped promote Krautrock in the 1970s, and the band Can formed in the city in 1968. Football support centres on 1. FC Köln, and the Kölner Haie fill the Lanxess Arena for ice hockey.

About 1.1 million people lived in Cologne at the end of 2025, and more than three million in the wider Cologne Bonn region; it is part of the Rhine-Ruhr, a polycentric region of more than ten million people. The city first reached a million in 1975 through a merger that was later reversed, and passed the mark again in 2009. Around a quarter of its buildings date from before 1945.

Ford Europe, with its European headquarters and factory in Niehl, is the largest employer, alongside the REWE Group, TÜV Rheinland, Deutz AG and the Kölsch breweries, of which Reissdorf, Gaffel and Früh are the largest. Cologne is a major media city, home to WDR, RTL, VOX and Deutschlandradio, and the trade fair hosts events from Gamescom to Art Cologne. The University of Cologne, the Technical University and the German Sport University give the city a very large student population.

Life is organised around the Veedel, as the neighbourhood is called in dialect. Rose-ringed parakeets have become a familiar sight in the parks. Cologne became the first German city of more than a million people to declare a climate emergency, and flood walls, pumping stations and forecasting protect the riverside districts from the Rhine's high waters.

Cologne's food is the cooking of the Rhenish brewhouse. A Halve Hahn is not half a chicken but half a Röggelchen, a double rye roll, with thick slices of medium-aged Gouda; Himmel un Ääd, "heaven and earth", is mashed potato with apples, served with fried black pudding; and Reibekuchen, potato pancakes, come with apple sauce and are a common sight at outdoor markets and festivals in the colder months. Sauerbraten, beef marinated for days in wine or vinegar and herbs, has a Rhineland version of its own.

Kölsch is the city's beer: pale gold, clear and top-fermented, then conditioned cold like a lager. Since 1997 the name has been a protected geographical indication, reserved for beer brewed within 50 kilometres of Cologne under the brewers' Kölsch convention. It is served in the brewhouses of the old town south of the cathedral, where Früh is the best known, and in less touristy pubs such as Päffgen on Friesenstraße.

Immigration has shaped the rest of the table. Keupstraße in Mülheim, the "Little Istanbul", is lined with Turkish restaurants and markets, Turkish snack bars cluster at Eigelstein north of the station and around Zülpicher Platz, and the student streets of the Kwartier Latäng add Lebanese and Persian takeaways. The Belgian Quarter and Ehrenfeld have the city's most varied mix of restaurants and bars.