I'm goiing to Cologne for a weekend in September, can anyone recommend a waling tour guide / company. I prefer small group tours (10 people max) with a focus on hisoty. Private is possible too depending on cost. Any other tips are much appreciated.
Posted by
Paris/Strasbourg
97 posts
I am a big history fan, and I lived in Cologne part of the year 3 years in a roll (2015-2017). I visited everything relating to Cologne's Roman/Medieval/WWII past. Do a google image search of "Cologne 1945" and you'll see 95% of Cologne was destroyed. You won't need a guided walking tour. The main sights are the museums.
WWII History -- NS-Dokumentationszentrum (info in English), Kölnisches Stadtmuseum (entire history of Cologne to the present days, good English info sheets available. Many students work there as explainer. They speak good English. Small but excellent museum housed in the lovely medieval Zeughaus). Both museums are only a block apart.
Roman history -- the tourist office directly in front of the cathedral has an excellent free city map which clearly marks every scrap of roman/medieval remnants scattered about the city. I had visited every one of them by public transport and on foot. They are just small bits like a small section of the town wall, or a town gate. The Romano-Germanic Museum next to the Cathedral is very good. The Praetorium (roman residence and sewer system, between the City Hall and the Cathedral) is worth a visit.
The important Roman history sights in Cologne are --
https://www.cologne.de/what-to-do/sightseeing/roman-cologne.html
http://www.roemisch-germanisches-museum.de/Archaeological-Monuments
Medieval sites -- https://www.cologne.de/what-to-do/sightseeing/medieval-cologne.html
Cologne has many good art museums. The Museum Pass is a very good value for art museum fans -- https://museenkoeln.de/portal/Museumscard-en
September is the Harvest Festival time for the cute small towns along the Rhine, which can be easily visited using KD river cruise ship from Cologne (as hip-on hop-off) https://www.kdrhine.com/. I had used KD ships to visit the prettiest section of the Rhine (Rüdesheim -- Bacharach). There is also a local train that runs along the Rhine from Cologne to Koblenz to Mainz, also a good hop-on hop-off option to visit the cute towns along the Rhine. Cologne's tourist office has the Harvest Festival list.
Posted by
OP
UK
32 posts
Hi Ashley, thank you so much for such excellent detailed info. I will defintiely follow your advice and am pretty excited about the Roman history, I had no idea!
Posted by
OP
UK
32 posts
Just to wrap up this post, I tried to find guides on Tripadvisor without any luck and then turned to Airbnb Experience and went on 2 tours, One with Sascha and the other with Jochen. They were both excellent. Sascha was such a good laugh, had a really wicked sense of humour. Jochen was more serious but also highly informed and both were good stroy tellers. The official cathederal tour was very informative too.
The Schweinenhaxe at Peters Brauwhaus was fantastic and worth gong back to Cologne for!