Nippes district, Cologne, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany

Nippes is the 5th district of Cologne. It includes the districts of Bilderstöckchen, Longerich, Mauenheim, Niehl, Nippes, Riehl, Weidenpesch. It is located on the left bank of the Rhine, north of Cologne city center. The city district is located north of Cologne city center. The Roman border road to Xanten ran through it via Neuss, today’s Niehler Strasse and Sebastianstrasse. Already in Roman times there was a villa in the Cologne-Nippes district, as the manors at that time were called. Because the Rhine shifted a little to the west, today’s Neusser Strasse later became the main road to Neuss. In 1549 an inn in today’s Nippes is mentioned on this street.

The entire city district remained structured in a rural way until the middle of the 19th century. Except for a few small farming villages like Longerich and Niehl there was nothing else there. The towns bordering Cologne only began to grow from around 1850. In 1860 the zoo opened in Riehl, shortly afterwards the flora, a botanical garden and at the same time a destination for the upper class with a restaurant and ballroom. A railway repair shop and a marshalling yard are built in Nippes, and some factories are located there. Nippes is becoming a worker’s and railway dwelling place, around the zoo and flora in Riehl people with higher incomes live. A large barracks is being built north of Riehl.Riehler Heimstätten.

In 1888 the entire area was incorporated into Cologne. In the area of an old estate between Nippes and Niehl, the Weidenpescher Park is being built, Cologne’s first sports center with a golf course, horse racing track and Cologne’s first football stadium. Today only the racetrack exists. Large-scale settlement of the remaining parts of the city did not take place until the 20th century. The small farming and fishing village of Niehl becomes an industrial town, the villages of Mauenheim, Longerich and Merheim grow through residential development. In order not to always confuse the two districts of the same name, Merheim on the left bank of the Rhine is renamed Weidenpesch.

The Cologne Nippes district in the north of the city is familiar, calm and multicultural. It’s a well-being area. Köln Nippes is a kind of all-round district: it is still just in the center, offers comparatively cheap rents and is still well connected to the center and the rest of the city thanks to the tram and bus. Living in Nippes also means getting pretty close to the Cologne way of life: nowhere else do cultural diversity and Cologne tradition mix in such a lively neighborhood as in Nippes.

In summer, young and old play soccer, some have a barbecue or lie on the grass, others throw boules. As a shopping mile, Neusser Straße fulfills all wishes, it is one of the largest shopping streets in the city. The name Nippes says it all here, because cheap and bargain shops are lined up close together. The traditional weekly market takes place on Wilhelmplatz – every day except Sundays. The lively market is typical of the district.

History
In the area of what is now Cologne’s Nippes district, there is evidence that there was already a villa in Roman times. On the edge of the Nippes valley, a silted up arm of the Rhine (on today’s Niehler Kirchweg), was the old core of today’s Nippes, the glory of Mauenheim. The Nippes place name itself appears for the first time in a document from 1549 in connection with an inn known at the time (at today’s Florastraße, which was then called “Kappesgasse”). The name Nippes (Nipp-Haus) can possibly be interpreted as a house on a hill. In the 17th century, the gastronomy om knickknacks was notorious.

In 1794 the French occupation begins by the revolutionary troops. Several localities of the former Kurköln north of Cologne are combined to form Mairie de Longerich, a political entity that can be considered a kind of forerunner of the later Cologne district of Nippes. In 1815, Europe was reorganized at the Congress of Vienna. The Rhineland and Westphalia fall to Prussia, the Mairie is now called the Mayor’s Office Longerich and is part of the Cologne district. The former mayor’s office becomes Longerich in 1888, within which Nippes (with Riehl) forms a special community, incorporated into Cologne. A repair shop and a marshalling yard are being built in Cologne-Nippes as important railway facilities, but these have now been closed. In 1861 a workshop was set up for the railway.

From 1839 Jacob Mayer was the first in Germany to produce cast steel in Cologne-Nippes (at today’s Wilhelmplatz) using a steel molding process known in England. It was the first production facility of its kind in Germany. The industrialization of Nippes began in 1850 with the construction of a steam mill by Heinrich Auer – the “Auer-Mühle”. Auerstraße has been named after its builder since 1911. The businessman Julius Vorster and the chemist Hermann Julius Grüneberg founded the chemical factory Vorster & Grüneberg on November 1st, 1858, in which ammonia was produced.

The Nippes ammonia factory was established in 1869. It was the forerunner of the Kalk Chemical Factory. With the Clouth Gummiwerke, one of the largest industrial employers came to Nippes in 1868. The world-famous factory shaped the cityscape of Nippes during its expansion phase. The up-and-coming company was active in the manufacture of rubber goods and also diversified strongly into other composites. The company founded by Franz Clouth experienced its economic peak in 1962, when it had 2,241 employees. A corporate crisis was the cause of persistent losses suffered by the parent company Continental AGmoved to merge part of Clouth and dispose of other parts.

Finally, on June 17, 2003, the city of Cologne decided to acquire the company site, which has now grown to 160,000 m², in order to use it for residential construction and “non-disruptive business”.It had to be taken into account that the development on Niehler Strasse is a listed building. Conveyor belts were manufactured here until December 16, 2005, and Clouth Gummiwerke AG has been part of Germany’s industrial history since then. Until his death on September 7, 1910, Franz Clouth lived in a villa on Niehler Strasse that was built near the factory in 1883. Franz-Clouth-Straße has been named after him since 1915.

The first street names were given in 1873 (Christina-, Holbein-, Longericher- or Siebachstraße). Siebachstrasse is made up of the names of the Siepen and Selbach families, who ran a sugar factory in Hartwichstrasse between 1865 and 1875. The first street in Nippes was Niehler Straße (formerly: Niehler Weg), probably an old thoroughfare of the Romans.

Tourism

Churches, mosques, synagogues, temples
There are three churches worth seeing:
Old St. Catherine in Niehl (Sebastianstraße) is a small village church, some of which dates back to the 12th century.
Inaugurated in 1889, Luther Church in Nippes (Siebachstraße) is largely still furnished with the original furnishings and thus offers a good example of Protestant church building in the early days of the company. In addition to church services, many concerts of all types of music are held in the church today.
St. Engelbertin Riehl (Riehler Gürtel), consecrated in 1931, is one of the first modern churches in Cologne. Allegedly, the archbishop of the time refused to consecrate the church because he found the architecture so strange. The architect was Dominikus Böhm.
The former Luther Chapel in Longerich (Lindweilerweg) is also worth mentioning. First it was a stable building, then from 1933 a Protestant place of worship and from 2010, as St. Mikaelskirche, it is the only Ethiopian Orthodox church for Cologne and the surrounding area.

Buildings
The Weidenpescher Park is interesting for fans of sports history: some of the grandstands of the racecourse are listed as well as the last grandstand of the old football stadium. Some scenes from the film “The Miracle of Bern” were filmed here.
In the zoo there are still some buildings from the end of the 19th century, such as the old elephant house or the bird house at that time. These structures were built in exotic architectural styles.
The main building of the Flora was restored and modernized in 2014. You can still feel the charm of a posh excursion destination from the early days. Some of the greenhouses are not only worth seeing because of the plants.
The Colonia high-rise building on the banks of the Rhine in Riehl was 147 m high from its opening in 1973 to 1976, the tallest building in Germany and the tallest residential building in Europe. To this day it is the second tallest building in Cologne, the tallest residential building in Germany and the third tallest building in Germany that is not in Frankfurt. In contrast to many other high-rise apartment buildings, it is of a high standard. Access for viewing purposes is not possible.

Museums
Rhenish Industrial Railway Museum, Longericher Str. 214, 50739 Cologne(For the navigation system: enter Longericher Straße 249. The only access to the museum is the staircase on the right side of the street in the underpass, therefore not wheelchair accessible. There are sufficient parking spaces on Longericher Straße. The way to the vehicle show and the museum is marked.). A 600mm narrow-gauge railway travels through the site and to the individual stations. A “young” steam locomotive, built in 1921, a driver’s cab ride on the Henschel DH440 and a steel railcar ET57 from KBE are the highlights.

Parks
Flora Cologne. The Flora Köln is the second botanical garden in Cologne, which in 1864 was opened. The first had to give way to the new construction of Cologne Central Station. Entry to the flora is free. The greenhouses will be built from 2018 to 2022.
The Riehler Auen.
The Blücherpark in Neuehrenfeld or Bilderstöckchen, which was built in 1911 as a local recreation area for the then still industrial districts of Nippes and Neuehrenfeld. How to get there: By train from the city center, line 5 to the Nußbaumerstraße or Lenauplatz stop or line 13 to the Escher Straße stop.
Cologne zoo with aquarium. The zoo, opened in 1860, has elephants, Przewalski horses, hippos, tigers and other animals. De Clemenshof is also located in the zoo. Not only can you find old breeds of domestic animals there, it is also the home of Hennes VIII, the mascot of 1. FC Köln.

Subdivisions
Nippes consists of 7 Stadtteile (city parts):

Bilderstöckchen district
The Bilderstöckchen district is located between the Nippes marshalling yard and the Blücherpark. The name comes from a picture frame or holy house that was first mentioned in 1556. It marked a border and was renewed in 1860. At the time of the renovation of the Bilderstocks, the area in the area was still largely undeveloped. That was soon to change, however: towards the end of the 19th century, the Nippes train station and the slaughterhouse in Ehrenfeld were built. The first residential buildings and a school for the newcomers followed.

The Blücherpark was built between 1910 and 1913 as one of the first public parks in Cologne. To the north there is a new and strongly flourishing industrial area between Longericher Strasse and Robert-Perthel-Strasse. At the beginning of the 20th century, large areas were used to build an artillery depot. However, this was given up again during the Weimar Republic and taken over by the city of Cologne. With the help of the “Am Bilderstöckchen” settlement company, the large halls were converted and converted into apartments.

The buildings of the housing cooperatives continued to develop after the Second World War. The neighborhood grew. In 1965 the Protestant Nathanael Church was built. In 1974 the church received its distinctive campanile (bell tower) designed as a concrete sculpture, which is set off from the church building directly at the intersection of Escher Straße and Parkgürtel.

Sights
Wayside shrine, Blücherpark, industrial area Robert-Perthel-Straße, Heckhof, Joseph- DuMont professional college and Nathanael church

The Blücherpark was built between 1910 and 1913 as one of the first public parks in Cologne. At first it was connected to Neuehrenfeld and is an important recreational area.
Saint Francis of Assisi, parish church of the parish of the same name with the churches of St. Franziskus, St. Joseph and until 2016 also St. Monika in the deanery of Nippes
Nathanael Church with stepped church tower: the right supporting column forms a cross with the plate of the bell carrier
The Nathanaelkirche belongs to the Protestant Nathanael parish in Cologne-Bilderstöckchen. The church, named after the disciple Nathanael, was completed in 1965 and in 1974 received its distinctive campanile, separated from the church building, directly at the intersection of Escher Straße and Parkgürtel.

Longerich district
As early as the first Prussian census in 1816, a total of 2,229 people lived in the Mayoress of Longerich and in Riehl, Nippes, Merheim on the left bank of the Rhine (today Weidenpesch), Heimersdorf and the village of Longerich, 392 of them in the village of Longerich. The seat of the mayor’s office Longerich was in Longerich until 1862, then in Nippes. In 1888 Longerich was incorporated into Cologne together with Nippes, Mauenheim and Riehl.

In Longerich parts can be distinguished from each other: One is the old village of Longerich, which was first mentioned in the 10th century and was a tranquil farming village until the 19th century. Second, the Old Garden City and the New Garden City, as well as the so-called Hungarian settlement. The old garden city was built in 1936 with single-family houses and large gardens for self-sufficiency.

The foundation stone for the New Garden City was laid in 1956 on the occasion of the Catholic Day, which took place in Cologne that year. Hence the name Katholikentagssiedlung. The main focus was on inexpensive living space for families with children. Three years later, the Archbishop of Cologne, Joseph Cardinal Frings, inaugurated the settlement, which was at times the settlement with the largest number of children in all of Europe.

The Hungarian settlement was built for refugees who had to leave their homes after the Hungarian uprising against the communist regime in Budapest in 1956. It consists of several rows of terraced houses that were occupied by both Hungarian and German families in order to avoid the appearance of a ghetto. The concept of the garden city can still be seen today in the district, which is criss-crossed with green spaces and largely characterized by single-family housing developments.

Sights
Longerich industrial park on Robert-Perthel-Strasse, Heilig-Geist-Krankenhaus, Longericher Hauptstrasse, Sankt Bernhard, Sankt Dionysius and Wegekreuz Longericher Strasse

St. Dionysius Longerich
For many centuries, Longerich was a farming village northwest of Cologne. With the construction of the Cologne-Neuss-Krefeld railway in 1855, Longerich got a train station, which was initially built a few hundred meters north of the town. It was not until 1934 that the station was rebuilt on the outskirts of the village. Today only the trains of the S-Bahn line S 11 stop there. The elementary school in Alt-Longerich was founded in 1832 by the then mayor Franz Carl Denhoven. The Catholic parish church of St. Dionysius (architect: Vincenz Statz), rebuilt in neo-Gothic style in 1899, is located in the middle of the historic town center.

Old Garden City
The Alte Gartenstadt-Nord was founded in 1936. It consisted of massive single-family houses and relatively large gardens for self-sufficiency with vegetables, fruit and also chickens. During the Second World War, some of these houses were hit by incendiary bombs, but neighborhood help prevented worse, so there was no major damage from the war. Between 1950 and 1952 the parish church of Christ König was built there (architect: Fritz Schaller), the parish of which covered the eastern part of the district.

Hungarian settlement
The 1956 Hungarian uprising resulted in a large wave of refugees, with some refugees also reaching Longerich. The so-called Hungarian settlement, made up of several rows of terraced houses between Johannes-Rings- Strasse and the military ring on Meerfeldstrasse, was originally occupied by rows of Hungarian and German residents in order to avoid the appearance of a ghetto.

New Garden City
On the occasion of the Katholikentag in Cologne in 1956, the foundation stone of the so-called “Katholikentagssiedlung” was laid in the New Garden City in Longerich, which was built on an area originally mostly used for agriculture as a settlement with single-family houses for large Catholic families. The official groundbreaking ceremony was held by the District President of Cologne, Dr. Wilhelm Warsch on July 16, 1956, the inauguration of the completed settlement took place on September 12, 1959 by the Cologne Archbishop Josef Cardinal Frings.

Mauenheim district
Mauenheim is the smallest district of Cologne. The high population density is not noticeable through the green areas. Mauenheim as a district has existed since 1933. According to its planners, it belonged to the “garden city in the homeland style of urban character”. To this day, Mauenheim is a particularly popular urban place of residence with its own structural design and a distinctive club and community life.

Mauenheim was formed from parts of Nippes, Merheim on the left bank of the Rhine (today Weidenpesch) and Longerich. The core of the new district was a settlement built from 1919, which was built by GAG south of the north cemetery. The architect was Wilhelm Riphan. A lot of nature, a village appearance and accents that are reminiscent of medieval buildings shaped the settlement.

In 1924 Mauenheim was expanded to include the “Grüner Hof” settlement. This was followed by other housing estates from various housing associations. The settlement was initially called “Nippes Nord” and “Am Nordfriedhof” and, after the street names had been determined in January 1921, also “Nibelungensiedlung”. The name Mauenheim was determined in June 1921 in a GAG competition. The Nippes pastor Peter Schreiber had suggested the name. He wanted to remember the old glory of Mauenheim.

Sights
Allotment gardens “Nibelungenstrasse”, Nibelungen settlement, Sankt Quirinus, school building and settlement “Grüner Hof” with a beautifully designed green area

Niehl district
Until the 20th century, Niehl was shaped by its origins as an idyllic fishing village. The history of the village is impressively testified by the oldest building in Niehl, the “Niehler Dömchen”: the village church Alt Sankt Katharina with a tower from the 13th century. A large thermal power station in the port, which was extensively renovated in 2005, is a sign of this development that can be seen from afar. Modern and efficient technology provides both the necessary energy and the protection of the environment.

The structure of Niehl, which was incorporated into Cologne in 1888, changed after the First World War with the settlement of large companies, particularly petrochemical companies, and the Ford works. With the port of Niehl, one of the largest, most modern and most important transshipment centers for industry on the Rhine was created in the 1920s. The industry focus Niehl up in the district of Cologne which dominate geographically largest and jobs most densely occupied commercial and industrial area. In the land areas on both sides of Emden Street and industry road the plant and production of Ford’s watch movements AG Cologne, which here since 1929 have helped shape urban industrial history.

More than 80 years ago, Henry Ford I was already convinced of the location advantages of the city of Cologne and the space offered in Niehl, directly on the Rhine, and at that time prompted the company to settle. The German and European headquarters of the Ford-Motoren- Company as well as the plant for motor vehicle production, including the engine and transmission plant, forge and toolmaking, are located at the traditional location in Niehl.

In the vicinity of the factory premises, three-story rows of houses have been built for the workers since the 1950s. In the meantime they have been extensively renovated and most of them have been converted into a solar settlement. Innovative energy technologies can also be found in the new housing estate on the former Siemens site. The single and multi-family houses for more than 1,000 people are almost exclusively supplied with geothermal energy.

Sights
DuMont Schauberg publishing house, Ford works, thermal power station, Niehler Dömchen, Niehler Hafen and Sankt Agatha hospital

Particularly worth seeing is the Alt St. Katharina church, consecrated in 1260, whose Romanesque west tower, which probably dates from the 12th century, is the oldest building in Niehl. The small village church, also called “Niehler Dömchen”, is therefore looked after by the Friends of Roman Churches in Cologne. First mentioned in the “Capella” is in a document of 1236 the congregation of St. Kunibert to which they were subject to duty.

The originally three-aisled basilica was rebuilt several times – except for the tower – the south aisle was demolished in the 13th century in favor of a larger Gothic central nave with a choirwhich was then vaulted in the 14th century. The north aisle was rebuilt in 1894 on the old foundations. – The flood-prone location on the Rhine made it necessary to build an ice breaker with a wall on the church in 1747. It was crowned and protected by a statue of John of Nepomuk with the same year. The church is still in use and can therefore only be visited before the services and by appointment.

The neo-Romanesque church of St. Katharina, the construction of which was necessary from 1892–1894 due to the growth of the community, was built according to plans by Theodor Kremer with a west tower, three-aisled nave, transept and semicircular apse. Parts of the furnishings such as the octagonal baptismal font from the 14th century were taken over from the old church. It was badly damaged in World War II and gradually rebuilt after 1947 with the first building security measures according to plans by Rudolf Schwarz. Above all, the interior was designed according to newer ideas.

Niehl owns three old school houses from Prussian times, which are located in Halfengasse and Merkenicher Straße.

Nippes district
Nippes has been part of Cologne since the large incorporation in 1888. The name is first recorded in a document from 1549 as “am Nippes”. For many centuries this was a settlement area on Neusser Strasse at the intersection of Mauenheimer Strasse and Florastrasse. The first settlement in the Nippes area is much older. Already in the first and second centuries there was a Roman farm (villa rustica) on the site of the Altenberger Hof. A Roman trunk road from Cologne led through Nippes along the route of today’s Niehler Strasse.

The area “am Nippes” belonged to the Sankt Kunibert monastery and comprised the area of the present-day districts of Nippes, Bilderstöckchen and Mauenheim. The three Mauenheimer Höfe – the Altenberger Hof is still there today – formed the center of the “glory of Mauenheim”. Today the restored Altenberger Hof serves as a community and cultural center.

To this day, the meaning has not been clarified beyond doubt. Since 1881, 18 different approaches to defining terms have been developed. Including the unlikely, such as the derivation of “sipping” (drinking in small gulps). Probably the origin is to be looked for in the house on the silted up arm of the Rhine (“Niep”). Such an arm of the Rhine actually ran through Nippes and today forms the popular and especially popular in the summer months of the Nippeser Tälchen green area.

In the south, the Neustadt / Nord district borders on Nippes. The growth of Nippes in the 19th century is closely linked to the settlement of industrial companies such as the Clouth rubber works or the Auer Mühle. Whole streets present house facades from the Wilhelminian era and Art Nouveau, for example Schwerinstrasse, Leipziger Platz and Eisenachstrasse. The district of Nippes forms the center of the district of the same name with the district center on Neusser Straße, a “shopping mile” known and loved far beyond Cologne’s borders, and the equally famous Wilhelmplatz with its fresh market that takes place every weekday.

Sights
Alhambra (jewelry complex of the inner green belt), Altenberger Hof with community center, Luther Church, Neusser Straße, Nippeser Tälchen, Rheinisches Industriebahn Museum, Sankt Vinzenz Hospital and Wilhelmplatz with market

Nippes is known among other things for his daily (except Sundays) held the market on the Wilhelmsplatz. It was launched around 1900. The street carnival in the district is traditionally opened there on Weiberfastnacht at 9.11 a.m. by the Nippes vigilante, a traditional corps of the Cologne carnival.

There are attractive green spaces on the outskirts of the district: the “Nippeser Tälchen” in the north, the “Nippeser Schweiz” in the southwest, the “Lohsepark” in the south and the “Johannes-Giesberts-Park” in the east. Whole streets present house facades from the Wilhelminian style and Art Nouveau, Schwerinstrasse, Leipziger Platz and Eisenachstrasse. Also worth seeing are the “Altenberger Hof”, which now houses the Nippes Citizens Center, and the Nippes churches. The oldest among them is the church “St. Heinrich und Kunigund ”(built 1850–1852 according to plans by the master builder Vincenz Statz) on Mauenheimer Strasse, one of the youngest St. Hildegard in der Au on Corrensstrasse.

The Gymnasium Köln-Nippes (unofficially also called “Blüchergymnasium”, since the beginning of 2011 officially “Leonardo-da-Vinci-Gymnasium Köln-Nippes”), located in the middle of Nippes, has a recently renovated, handsome facade made of red, white-banded Miltenberg sandstone and houses a planetarium and two observatories.

The Evangelical Luther Church is considered the only neo-Gothic church in Cologne with almost completely preserved original furnishings, including a complete window cycle. It is also used regularly as a cultural church.

Riehl district
Riehl, first mentioned in a document in 972, consisted of a few scattered farmsteads until well into the 19th century. After the severe flooding of the Rhine in 1845, a festival area was built near the Rhine, around which numerous excursion and entertainment venues were located.

The Cologne Zoo was opened near the excursion restaurants in 1860. The Flora followed four years later, a park with representative gastronomy, which was expanded to include the botanical garden in 1914. To the north of this, an upper-class villa district emerged in the following decades, which is still the core of a popular residential area today.Zoo, Flora and Riehler Heimstätten (today: Sozial-Betriebe-Köln) still shape the district today, despite many changes. The Cologne Zoo is one of the most beautiful in Germany. The flora is extensively renovated and restored.

At the beginning of the 20th century barracks for Prussian artillery and engineer troops were built on a large, previously undeveloped site on Boltensternstrasse. After the demilitarization of the Rhineland as a result of the First World War, the barracks were partly used by British occupation troops. After the occupation troops withdrew in 1926, the Riehler Heimstätten, a large old people’s home complex, was built on part of the site. A large part of the old barracks buildings could thus be given a new purpose.

Riehl is also home to other important urban developments: The first modern church in Cologne was built here between 1931 and 1932 – the round church of Sankt Engelbert by Dominikus Böhm. The eight-part, arched central building on a round floor plan was so unusual at the time that the architect was asked to “remove the strange from the building by softening the new”.

The Colonia high-rise at An der Schanz 2 was built in 1972. The building, which is now owned by Axa-Versicherung, forms an architectural eye-catcher directly on the banks of the Rhine that can be seen from afar. With a height of 147 meters (with antenna 155 meters) it is the tallest building in Germany, which is mainly used for residential purposes. Riehl is also well known to young tourists from all over the world, as there is also a modern youth hostel of the German Youth Hostel Association here.

Sights
Colonia high-rise, flora with botanical garden, youth hostel, Naumannviertel, Rhine cable car, round church Sankt Engelbert, social enterprise Cologne, Stammheimer Straße / Riehler belt, zoo and zoo bridge

Zoological Garden
The Cologne Zoo shows over 9,000 animals from all over the world in a park area of around 20 hectares that extends from the southern edge to the center of Riehl. The zoo directors have paid special attention to the horticultural design of the facility since the zoo was founded in 1860. They have therefore – in accordance with the changing tastes of the time and following the growing understanding of species-appropriate animal husbandry – given the zoological garden a diverse shape,

including a system for watercourses and ponds (e.g. for pelicans and flamingos 1860/70), animal houses in Moorish architecture (Antelope house 1864), extensive tree planting (around 1880), rock structures (Monkey Rocks 1914), fenced enclosures (etc.)Camel Park 1936) as well as natural animal houses (jungle house 1985) and big cat areas (e.g. for lions and tigers 1963/64 and leopards and snow leopards 1993/94). The presentation of the flora and fauna of entire ecosystems was implemented for the tropical rainforest (Tropenhaus 2000) and an African river landscape (Hippodom 2010). The elephant park (2004) takes up almost a tenth of the total area of the zoo, which is designed as an area interspersed with rocks and filled with Sahara sand.

Flora and Botanical Garden
The botanical garden called ” Flora ” covers an area of 11.5 hectares on the south-western edge of Riehl. The ornamental and show garden, laid out 150 years ago and significantly expanded 100 years ago, shows garden art since historicism. The eye-catcher is the flower ground floor between the main entrance on Lennéplatz and the palatial festival hall. The vanishing point in the northern part of the garden is the Alpinum rising behind a water lily pond, over which an artificial waterfall flows. In the last decades the only planted palm avenue in Germany, the camellia forest, the fragrance garden and the dahlia garden have becomecreated. The flora cultivates over 10,000 types of plants from all vegetation areas, some of which are shown in the greenhouses. Numerous trees, including a sequoia tree and a Lebanon cedar, date from when the garden was founded and are among the largest of their kind in Germany.

Riehler Aue
The Riehler Aue on the banks of the Rhine received its current topographical shape from the Federal Horticultural Show in 1971. The area with a total area of around 27 hectares is narrow in the southern part and offers space for a flood dam planted as an avenue. To the north of the Colonia high-rise, it widens like a park to an area planted with loose groups of trees, which was horticulturally designed as a typical Rhine meadow landscape. The area behind the flood dam was either already raised in 1955 by filled rubble by around 8 meters to today’s dam height and thus brought to a flood-safe level or only from 1969 in preparation for the Federal Horticultural Show in 1971.

From 1971 until the bankruptcy in 1975, the Cologne Tivoli amusement park was located between Mülheimer Brücke and Cranach grove. In 1983 the “youth hostel” called Cologne youth hostel with 400 places was built in the Riehler Aue. Two years later, the old Riehler open-air pool “Rheinlust” located there was closed; A beer garden was laid out on its area.

Naumannsiedlung
The Naumannsiedlung is a housing estate built in the years 1927 to 1929 by the Gemeinnützige Wohnungsgesellschaft AG according to plans of an architects’ consortium under the direction of Manfred Faber in the Cologne district of Riehl. It got its name from the Naumannplatz in the middle of the settlement. Since 2011, the listed estate has been completely renovated and externally adjusted to its original condition.

Weidenpesch district
In 1897 the Weidenpescher racecourse was built, which is still one of the most internationally renowned horse racing fields in Germany today. Some of the most important German horse races (Prize of Europe, Union races) take place here. The name of the district has its origins in a courtyard of the St. Gereon Abbey, the Weiden Paecherhof. For a long time the place was called Merheim and in 1888 it was also incorporated into Cologne as Merheim (left bank of the Rhine). In the period that followed, there were repeated mix-ups with Merheim on the right bank of the Rhine and incorrect mail deliveries, so that the district has been called Weidenpesch again since the end of the Second World War.

The center of Weidenpesch is on Neusser Straße. Many housing estates were built there in the 1920s, 1930s and 1950s, so that the young district developed strongly. The new district town hall was also built on Neusser Strasse on the border with the Nippes district between 1999 and 2000. In the district there are also important central facilities of Cologne such as the main station of the professional fire brigade or the main workshop of the Cologne transport company, which was built in 1921 by the renowned Cologne architect Wilhelm Riphan.

Sights
District town hall Nippes, inn “Zur Alten Zollbound”, main station of the Cologne fire brigade, KVB depot repair shop, north cemetery, racecourse and the Roßbach-Mollwitzstrasse settlement. The inn “Zur alten Zollbound” is one of the oldest in Cologne. It opened its doors in 1698. Napoleon is said to have stayed here.

Churches
The parish church of St. Stephanus has stood on Schmiedegasse since the 13th century. In 1860 this church was demolished because it was in disrepair. The new building, also dedicated to Saint Stephen, was completed in 1862 and was a parish church until the 1930s. The successor building, the Holy Cross Church, was built in 1931 based on a design by Heinrich Bartmann.

On the site of the Stefanskirche, Thomas Carl Tromm, the owner of the local wax factory, built the chapel “Madonna im Grünen” from the stones of the demolished parish church according to the plans of his son of the same name and inaugurated on December 4, 1954 by Auxiliary Bishop Wilhelm Cleven.

The Catholic Salvator Church (architect Theodor Kelter) on Schlesischer Platz was built in 1957/1958.

At the beginning of the 1950s, the Protestant Church of the Redeemer designed by Gottfried Tucholski – partly made of stones from rubble sites – was built and consecrated as an “emergency church”. The demolition took place in 2020. The Ev. Mauenheim-Weidenpesch parish has had a new redeemer church center with a church service room, community rooms, a three-group daycare center and eight apartments since mid-2020. The architect is Joel Harris from the Harris & Kurrle architectural office in Stuttgart.

Jakob Pallenberg workers’ settlement
Jakob Pallenberg (May 9, 1831 – March 25, 1900) was a German furniture manufacturer who acted as a patron of the arts. He ran the carpentry trade at the transition to industrial production. The “Jakob Pallenbergs Arbeiterheim” settlement was designed by the architects Hans Verbeek and Balduin Schilling in the form of a residential complex of 19 individual houses with kitchen gardens, two dormitories and a community house.

Weidenpescher Park
The Weidenpescher Park is a 55 hectare green area in Cologne-Weidenpesch, in which several important sports facilities are located. In the years before the First World War, a sports center was built here, which only had to move back into the second row with the construction of the sports park in Müngersdorf from 1923. Cologne’s first golf course was also located in Weidenpescher Park. Next to the racecourse there are tennis courts used by the KTC Weidenpescher Park tennis club, founded in 1920. In addition to the six outdoor courts, there is also a tennis hall with three courts that was inaugurated in December 1990.

North cemetery
The Cologne North Cemetery is a municipal cemetery in the Cologne district of Weidenpesch in the district of Nippes. The north cemetery was laid out at the end of the 19th century as a result of the increasing shortage of burial places both in the many small cemeteries in the city and in the Melaten cemetery, which was the only central cemetery in Cologne’s left-hand side until then. The new “relief cemetery”, originally laid out on a 28 hectare area of a former gravel pit, was opened on May 18, 1896. The park-like character of the cemetery with its system of paths curved around a central axis is due to the concept of the Cologne gardening director Adolf Kowallek, who modeled the facility on the Ohlsdorf cemetery in Hamburghad created. At the same time, the administration building was erected in the Rhenish neo-Gothic style in the entrance area. Around 1920 a mourning hall intended for 80 mourners was built near the main entrance, a nobly proportioned building in the style of neoclassicism.