Old Market

This guide to the Old Market in Cologne starts with what survived the war here, just two Renaissance houses behind an otherwise rebuilt square, before turning to the bronze horseman at its center. Jan was a poor farmhand turned lieutenant general after the Cologne kitchen maid Griet turned down his proposal, and the guide follows his rise through the Thirty Years War and years as a prisoner in Paris before he made his way home. Its base is carved with the whole romance in relief, a story the fountain has outlasted two world wars to keep telling.