COLOGNE KÖLSCHE LEGENDEN RUN – 15K

Most visitors meet Cologne through its Cathedral. This tour meets it through its gossip. The Kölsche Legenden Run is a 15 km loop through the stories Cologne residents actually grew up with: the statues, fountains and pub tales that sit quietly beside the city’s famous sights, from the Cologne Cathedral to the Hohenzollernbrücke and the Old Town’s Alter Markt.

We start at Hahnentorburg, one of only three surviving gates of the medieval city wall, once the ceremonial entrance for newly crowned kings arriving from Aachen. A short warm-up brings us to Bräuhaus Päffgen, a Kölsch brewery pouring on the Friesenstraße since 1883: the first of two traditional breweries on the route.

From there we run into the Altstadt’s densest cluster of folklore: the bronze statue of Tünnes und Schäl, Cologne’s beloved double act from the Hänneschen puppet theatre; the Jan-von-Werth fountain, telling the story of a rejected farmhand who became a general and got the girl after all and the Kallendresser, a small bronze figure that has been mooning the town hall for generations. Nearby, Groß St. Martin and the Cologne Cathedral add their own legend: the devil who supposedly swore the Cathedral would never be finished, and was very nearly right. A short detour brings us to the Heinzelmännchenbrunnen, the tale of the industrious night-gnomes whose work ethic Cologne has never quite managed to replace.

We cross the Rhine on the Hohenzollernbrücke, past the city’s famous love-lock collection, to Deutz, where the remains of a Roman fort sit quietly beneath the Rheinboulevard’s modern river terraces. Back across the Severinsbrücke, we follow the river south into the Rheinauhafen, where the futuristic Kranhäuser stand beside the medieval Bayenturm. At Chlodwigplatz, Früh “Em Veedel” gives us our second Kölsch stop, before the route turns inland through the Vorgebirgspark, past the Sachsenturm and two of Cologne’s twelve Romanesque churches, and home through the quiet Mauritius quarter, past the church where Konrad Adenauer was baptised and rather than back along the busy Ringe. It’s a run for guests who want Cologne’s version of itself: warm, self-deprecating, and telling on itself the whole way round.

PICK-UP SERVICE
Pick-up service from your hotel/apartment or another meeting point is possible and will be checked by the tour provider individually. If your hotel/apartment should be too far away from the city centre or not close to the tour route, then we will meet you at our standard meeting point.

MEETING DETAILS
The tour provider will get in contact with you to provide you with more detailed information after the tour was booked. Please, bring along your mobile phone in case we need to contact each other.

WHAT IS INCLUDED?

• Private guide/tour
• Individual pace
• Digital photos
• Tour route
• Pick-up service
• Snacks