Köln-Altstadt-Nord
Roman market street turned old city quarter, where medieval craftsmen's shops gave way to Kölsch taverns and Turkish tea houses.
This guide to Koln-Altstadt-Nord follows the Eigelstein strip in Cologne's old city, a market street that was once the Roman cardo maximus and has fed the city for two thousand years without a real pause, even when Napoleon's troops tried renaming it. It traces the medieval potters, glassblowers and blacksmiths who built the quarter's tavern culture, and the wave of Turkish coffeehouses and tea rooms that turned nearby Weidengasse into what locals call Klein Istanbul. Look for the thirteenth-century Eigelsteintorburg gate tower marking the boundary between the two worlds.
Audio guides are written and narrated by AI.