Museums in Cologne

The German Sports & Olympics Museum occupies a converted Rhineland warehouse in the Rheinauhafen district. It covers German sports history from ancient athletics to the modern Olympics with interactive exhibits and a rooftop sports field.

Museum Ludwig is one of Europe's most important modern and contemporary art museums, housing the largest Pop Art collection outside the United States. Located directly behind Cologne Cathedral, it opened in 1986 after chocolate magnates Peter and Irene Ludwig donated their collection.

The Wallraf-Richartz Museum is Cologne's oldest museum, founded in 1824. It holds an outstanding collection of European fine art from the medieval period through the early 20th century, with particular strength in Cologne School Gothic painting and Baroque Dutch masters.

The Roman-Germanic Museum (Römisch-Germanisches Museum) houses one of Europe's most important collections of Roman artifacts, built directly over the site where the famous Dionysus mosaic was discovered in 1941 during an air raid shelter excavation.

The Schokoladenmuseum (Chocolate Museum) sits on a Rhine peninsula in a ship-shaped glass-and-aluminum building. It traces 5,000 years of chocolate history from Mesoamerican origins to modern industrial production and is one of Cologne's most-visited attractions.

Kolumba is the art museum of the Archdiocese of Cologne, designed by Swiss architect Peter Zumthor. The building itself is the star — a luminous gray brick structure that floats over the excavated ruins of the Gothic church of St. Kolumba, destroyed in WWII.

The Kölnisches Stadtmuseum covers Cologne's city history with a special focus on Carnival (Karneval), the city's most important cultural tradition. The permanent collection traces Cologne from Roman Colonia to modern metropolis.

The EL-DE Haus served as the Gestapo headquarters for Cologne from 1935 to 1945. Today it houses the NS Documentation Centre, the largest regional memorial in Germany dedicated to National Socialist history. The basement prison cells with original wall inscriptions by detainees form the most affecting part of the visit.

The Farina Fragrance Museum occupies the original house where Italian-born Johann Maria Farina created "Eau de Cologne" in 1709. It is the birthplace of the world's oldest continuously produced fragrance and offers guided tours through 300 years of perfume history.

The Museum of Applied Arts (Museum für Angewandte Kunst Köln — MAKK) presents design and decorative arts from the Middle Ages to the present. The building itself, designed by Rudolf Schwarz in 1957, is a notable example of postwar modernist architecture.