Eigelsteintorburg

This guide to the Eigelsteintorburg in Cologne follows Marie de Medici, once regent of France, who passed beneath these twin medieval towers in October 1641 with barely a coin to her name. Exiled after losing a power struggle with Cardinal Richelieu, she had drifted between courts for a decade before an old friend, the painter Peter Paul Rubens, lent her a house in the city. The guide traces her fall from the height of French power to that borrowed room, and the towers' own later life guarding Cologne's northern road. Look up at the dark volcanic stone hauled from the Drachenfels hills.