Cologne

Cologne (German: Köln) is Germany's fourth-largest city (after Berlin, Hamburg and Munich), and is the largest city both in the German Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants. Cologne is a major cultural centre, and its University is among the oldest and largest of Europe.

A view of Cologne

The Cologne Cathedral

Quotes

• In Köln, a town of monks and bones,
  And pavement fang'd with murderous stones,
  And rags and hags, and hideous wenches,
  I counted two-and-seventy stenches,
  All well defined, and several stinks!
  Ye nymphs that reign o'er sewers and sinks,
  The River Rhine, it is well known,
  Doth wash your city of Cologne;
  But tell me, nymphs! what power divine
  Shall henceforth wash the river Rhine?
  • Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Cologne; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 124.