St. Gereon

St. Gereon stands in Cologne as one of the city’s twelve major Romanesque churches. Its core preserves an oval Roman building constructed between 350 and 365. The ancient structure once stood above Cologne’s oldest burial ground, beside two Roman streets. Today, Roman, Romanesque, and Gothic elements meet beneath a striking central dome.

Between 1219 and 1227, builders enclosed the oval core within a decagonal structure and added the dome. The dome reaches 34.5 metres. Eight apse-shaped niches surround the interior, while galleries and lancet windows draw your gaze upward. Up to 16.5 metres of the original Roman walls remain within the later construction.

A small mosaic floor fragment survives in an apse, with colourful tesserae arranged in patterns. Near the entrance, a granite blood column recalls the martyrdom of Saint Gereon and his companions. The crypt holds a sarcophagus containing relics attributed to the Roman officer Gereon. Fragments of the eleventh-century Cloth of Saint Gereon, regarded as Europe’s oldest surviving tapestry, are preserved in museums in four cities.