How we work

Anyone travelling to the cathedral wants to be able to rely on opening times, admission prices and luggage rules. This page explains how we collect, cross-check and update this information – and what we do when even the official pages disagree.

Visitor information: the Cathedral Chapter is authoritative

We regularly check opening times, prices and closing days against the pages of the Cathedral Chapter (Domkapitel), which runs the cathedral; information tied to a date – such as maintenance work, seasonal times or festivals – carries a review date in our files, after which our checking script raises an alarm when the website is built. At the top of each page you can see on which day this was last done. Such information sometimes changes at short notice; if in doubt, what the Cathedral Chapter publishes on koelner-dom.de applies. Tickets can only be bought there.

When official information differs

Even the Cathedral Chapter’s pages occasionally contradict each other. Two examples:

• Luggage: The tower page allows bags up to 40 × 35 × 10 cm, the general visitor information up to 40 × 35 × 15 cm.¹,²
• Viewing platform: 97.25 metres or “around 100 m” – both values with their sources on the Facts and figures page.

In such cases we do not silently choose one value. Both figures appear with their source, and where a wrong assumption could hold you up at the ticket desk, we advise going by the stricter figure.

How we weight our sources

1. Tier 1 – authorities, research, legislation: for example the German Commission for UNESCO, the state government of North Rhine-Westphalia, the City of Cologne and research institutions.
2. Tier 2 – those directly involved and specialist media: above all the Cathedral Chapter and the Dombauhütte (the cathedral’s permanent building workshop), as well as news agencies and public broadcasters, always with their publication date.
3. Tier 3 – Wikipedia and similar reference works: they lead us to sources but never count as evidence themselves here.

Below each text you will find its sources with the date they were accessed, and the complete list under Sources. We do not print a figure for which we have no evidence.

What we calculate ourselves

Distances to the cathedral are straight-line distances, determined from OpenStreetMap coordinates (© OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL). We estimate the walking routes given: straight-line distance multiplied by 1.3, a pace of 4.5 km/h, rounded up to the next full five minutes. A hotel is included in the hotel list according to a fixed rule, namely because of its distance and an address confirmed on the hotel’s own website; we only add “cathedral view” if the hotel advertises it itself. Personal tips are marked “Our recommendation” and come with a reason.³,⁴,⁵

Who is behind dom-zu-köln.de

dom-zu-köln.de is published by fusePRO Online Marketing in Wiesbaden, owner Dennis Hain; the texts are written by our editorial team. We have no commission from, and no financial ties to, the Cathedral Chapter, the Archdiocese of Cologne or the City of Cologne. All provider details are in the Legal notice.

AI as a tool of the editorial team

We use Claude, an AI model by Anthropic, for writing – for research, structuring, wording and translating. What each statement of fact is based on is recorded in our list of sources. Before publication, a second pass that is independent of the writing takes samples and compares them with the evidence; this pass, too, is automated. We therefore do not promise you that a human checks every single statement. Editorial responsibility lies with the publisher: Dennis Hain for fusePRO Online Marketing. You will not find invented experts, author names or quotations here.

This English version

This English version has been translated from the German original. The translation was done with the help of AI and checked by machine (completeness, figures, names, sources) and by a back-translation of sample pages; it has not yet been proofread by a native speaker. If the two versions differ, the German version applies. Most of our sources are in German; they are listed under their original titles and marked “(in German)”.

Photos and drawings

We only show the cathedral photographed from outside and from public areas; we do not show photos of the interior, because the house rules and copyright law set narrow limits (details under Photography). So far, our own drawings exist only for the climb up the South Tower; we currently do not show the interior or individual works of art in pictures. Our photos come from Unsplash; the licence there does not require attribution, but we still name the photographer, source and licence – collected in the image credits under Sources. We do not use press photos.

No advertising, no commission

On this website there are no adverts, no commission links and no paid content, and we do not sell admission tickets. We earn nothing from hotel bookings. We do not set any cookies.

We count visits with a cookieless Matomo that we run on our own server (webstats.fusepro.de); the details are in the privacy policy.

Is something no longer correct?

Has a price changed, or an opening time no longer fits? Then please write to redaktion@dom-zu-köln.de – we deliberately do not have a contact form. We enter every correction with its date in the following table.

Corrections