Schauspielhaus Köln

On Offenbachplatz in Cologne, Germany, stands the Schauspielhaus Köln, the city's municipal drama theatre and company. With the Cologne Opera and other venues, it forms the Bühnen der Stadt Köln. Wilhelm Riphahn designed the building you see there, and it enjoys listed status as an architectural monument. The curtain first rose in 1962, with Schiller's Die Räuber.

Theatre in Cologne reaches back to the Middle Ages. The city built its first dedicated playhouse in 1782. A fire destroyed a successor building in 1869, and a new house rose in the Glockengasse in 1872. Carl Moritz planned a neo-baroque theatre on the Habsburgerring, finished in 1902 with 1,800 seats, a restaurant and a garden terrace. Gustav Hartung drew national attention in the 1920s by bringing well-known Berlin actors to the city. In 1929 the conservative Center Party opposed Brecht's Threepenny Opera, and the performance went ahead after the mayor, Konrad Adenauer, intervened. War then struck both houses, and a bombing raid in August 1943 caused the heaviest damage. Performances resumed by August 1945 in temporary venues: the university auditorium and a hall in the Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum. That museum hall served the company until 1994.

A major renovation began in 2010, and a citizens' initiative fought for the listed building. A referendum that April came down on their side. While the builders worked, the programme ran in the interim venues Depot 1 and Depot 2. Back inside the Riphahn building, the Grand House seats 830 spectators. The Schlosserei offers 120 more places, while the refreshment room, smallest of all, holds 60.