Alt St Alban

Alt St Alban tickets: which one to buy

There is nothing to buy: the church is a roofless ruin kept as a war memorial, open to the sky and enclosed by a low railing, and it can be looked into at any hour from the courtyard beside the Guerzenich concert hall in the middle of Cologne. No ticket, no opening times, no guide. Walking tours of the old town pass it and usually stop for a minute; those cost a moderate amount and cover a dozen sites.

The ruin is two minutes from the Alter Markt and five from the cathedral, so no transport is involved. Occasional concerts and art installations are staged inside the walls in summer and ticketed by the organisers, and the space is used for remembrance ceremonies each November. Nothing is signposted in English, and the ruin is easiest to find by aiming for the Guerzenich rather than for the church name.

Visiting Alt St Alban: what to see

Alt St Alban was a Romanesque parish church rebuilt in Gothic and then baroque form, and it burned out in the bombing of Cologne in 1943 like most of the city centre. When the Guerzenich was rebuilt in the 1950s the decision was taken to leave the church as it stood, without a roof, and to make it a memorial to the dead of the war.

In the middle of the empty nave stands a copy of Kaethe Kollwitz's sculpture The Grieving Parents, the pair of kneeling figures she carved for the German war cemetery at Vladslo in Belgium after her own son was killed in 1914; the version here was made in 1959. Grass grows between the stones, the windows are empty, and the effect is quiet in a way the rebuilt city around it is not. Fragments of the Gothic tracery survive in the west wall, and the original Kollwitz figures remain in Belgium, where she carved them over sixteen years.

Alt St Alban opening hours and the best time to go

Visible at all hours from the surrounding courtyard, with the interior sometimes accessible during events. There is no season and no crowd; the ruin is passed by thousands of people a day who do not look in. Winter and rain suit it. Cologne's Carnival in February and the Christmas markets in December fill the streets around it. There is no dress code and photography is unrestricted. Allow ten minutes.

Great St Martin is three minutes away, the cathedral five, and the Roman-Germanic museum holds the mosaics found beneath these streets, which makes a coherent hour of walking between four very different survivals of the same city. The courtyard is lit at night and the ruin is visible through the railings at any hour. Remembrance Sunday in November brings a ceremony to the ruin, and wreaths are left at the foot of the sculpture through the following week.