Kölner Festungsmuseum

In Cologne's Marienburg district, the Kölner Festungsmuseum fills Zwischenwerk VIII b, a fort of the outer ring raised between 1873 and 1918. The fort itself dates from 1876, built as a Biehler'sche Schemafort for the defence of the Rhine. Since 2004 volunteers have been documenting the whole Prussian fortress system that once surrounded the city.

In wartime the fort held about 150 soldiers, armed with a fifteen-centimetre ring cannon and three nine-centimetre C 73 guns. Under the Treaty of Versailles, demolition crews partly dismantled it in 1926. Much of the original fabric survived, though: the ditch with its nearly complete counterscarp, the rear caponier and the drawbridge. That drawbridge is the last original one of its kind in Germany, and visitors watch it in action. About 250 square metres of vaulted, listed casemates hold plans, display boards and exhibits on daily soldier life and military architecture. The entrance area is fully accessible to wheelchair users. Tours of roughly ninety minutes run regularly, starting outdoors among the park, the ditch systems and the former rose garden. Afterwards the group goes inside, past rooms explained from the guardroom to the powder magazine.

Up on the fort and in the ditch, a 1985 sculpture park sets works of steel, concrete and earth against the masonry. The Kunstraum Fuhrwerkswaage laid it out, with pieces by artists such as Ansgar Nierhoff and Heinz-Günter Prager. The Institut für Festungsarchitektur backs the museum and runs sister sites from Fort VI Deckstein in Lindenthal to the Winkelturm in Niehl. The site also lies on the Rodenkirchener Kulturpfad and the Kölnpfad, a circular trail joining natural and cultural sights around Cologne. For the long view, a recording called 'Neunzehnhundert Jahre befestigtes Köln' traces nineteen hundred years of fortification in the city.