Cologne
— — two black spires above a slow brown river.
Not only on a wall.
“Cologne is the cathedral city — two Gothic spires rising over the Rhine, visible long before the train pulls in. The city is older than most: a Roman colony from the year fifty, almost flattened in 1945, rebuilt around the Dom that somehow stayed standing. Down the river the old town keeps its narrow lanes, its breweries pouring Kölsch in narrow glasses, the carnival waiting for February. from the studio
Cologne, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Cologne sits on the Rhine in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany's fourth-largest city with about a million residents. It was founded in 50 AD as Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensium, the colony's name eventually shortened to Köln. The Romans, the Franks, the Holy Roman Empire, the French, and the Prussians all governed it in turn. Allied bombing destroyed roughly ninety percent of the medieval centre by 1945; the rebuild kept the Dom, the twelve Romanesque churches, and the river frontage at its heart.
Cologne Cathedral, the Kölner Dom, has twin spires reaching 157 metres — the tallest twin-spired church in the world. Construction began in 1248 and stalled for centuries; the cathedral was finally completed in 1880 to the original Gothic plans. Inside stands the Shrine of the Three Kings, a gilded reliquary dated to around 1190 and the largest of its kind in Europe. UNESCO listed the Dom as a World Heritage Site in 1996. It took damage in the war and remained standing.
Cologne's calendar bends around Karneval. The Fifth Season opens at eleven minutes past eleven on the eleventh of November and runs until Ash Wednesday. The peak week — Weiberfastnacht through Rosenmontag — fills the streets with costume, song, and parades. The Rosenmontagszug is the largest carnival procession in Germany, drawing more than a million people along a route over six kilometres long. Outside Karneval, Cologne keeps a quieter rhythm: river walks, the Christmas markets in December, and Kölsch in the brauhäuser.