Qualla: Timeline of Cologne

Timeline of Cologne: Introduction

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Koeln_1945.jpg: U.S. Department of Defense. Department of the Army. Office of the Chief Signal Officer. [1], Public domain. In the year 90, Cologne had 45,000 people, a Roman aqueduct bringing in spring water from the Eifel hills, and the title of capital of the province of Germania Inferior. Roughly thirteen centuries later, in 1473, masons finally put down their tools on the unfinished west front of Cologne Cathedral, leaving a wooden crane on the south tower that would stand there, untouched, for the next four hundred years. The city of Cologne does not measure time the way younger cities do. It is one of the very few places in northern Europe where you can stand inside a continuously inhabited Roman foundation and watch trams cross a Rhine bridge built in 1959. Here is the through-line.

Read more: Timeline of Cologne on Qualla

Image: Koeln_1945.jpg: U.S. Department of Defense. Department of the Army. Office of the Chief Signal Officer. [1] | Public domain

Timeline of Cologne: Roman Capital on the Rhine

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nicolaes Visscher II, Public domain. Germanicus, nephew of the emperor Tiberius, made the small Ubian settlement on the west bank his military headquarters in 13 CE. Two years later it became the administrative capital of Germania Inferior. In the year 50 the Romans formally established Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippine...

Read more: Timeline of Cologne on Qualla

Image: Nicolaes Visscher II | Public domain

Timeline of Cologne: Twelve Great Churches

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Koeln_1945.jpg: U.S. Department of Defense. Department of the Army. Office of the Chief Signal Officer. [1], Public domain. From the late tenth century onward, Cologne built churches with a confidence that took some of medieval Europe's breath away. Great St. Martin was founded in 960, St. Andreas consecrated in 974, St. Pantaleon in 980. St. Maria im Kapitol opened around 1065, St. Gereon's Basilica ...

Read more: Timeline of Cologne on Qualla

Image: Koeln_1945.jpg: U.S. Department of Defense. Department of the Army. Office of the Chief Signal Officer. [1] | Public domain

Timeline of Cologne: Prussian Cologne

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit G. Friedrich, CC BY 3.0. The French First Republic annexed the city in 1796 and closed the medieval University of Cologne two years later. The Treaty of Lunéville in 1801 made Cologne formally French. After Napoleon fell, the Congress of Vienna handed the city to Prussia in 1815, and it began a century o...

Read more: Timeline of Cologne on Qualla

Image: G. Friedrich | CC BY 3.0

Timeline of Cologne: The City Erased and Rebuilt

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Koeln_1945.jpg: U.S. Department of Defense. Department of the Army. Office of the Chief Signal Officer. [1], Public domain. The bombing of Cologne began in 1940 and continued for almost the entire war. The Nazi state established forced-labour camps in and around the city: the III SS construction brigade in 1942, the Köln Stadt subcamp of Buchenwald in August 1944, the Westwaggon subcamp the next month...

Read more: Timeline of Cologne on Qualla

Image: Koeln_1945.jpg: U.S. Department of Defense. Department of the Army. Office of the Chief Signal Officer. [1] | Public domain

Timeline of Cologne: The Recent City

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Koeln_1945.jpg: U.S. Department of Defense. Department of the Army. Office of the Chief Signal Officer. [1], Public domain. On 9 June 2004 a nail bomb planted by neo-Nazis exploded in a Turkish neighbourhood in Mülheim, injuring twenty-two people; investigators eventually traced it to the National Socialist Underground. In 2015 Henriette Reker became the first female mayor of Cologne, sworn in one day...

Read more: Timeline of Cologne on Qualla

Image: Koeln_1945.jpg: U.S. Department of Defense. Department of the Army. Office of the Chief Signal Officer. [1] | Public domain