Museum of the Cologne diocese "Columba"

It is one of the oldest art museums in Cologne and houses a collection of religious art from the Archbishopric of Cologne.

The museum was founded by the Society for Christian Art in 1853, and in 1989 passed to the Archbishop of Cologne. The building, designed by architect Peter Zumtor in 2003-2007, initially became a cause of violent indignation, because it was based on the ruins of the late Romanesque church of St. Columba, which was once the center of one of the largest parishes of medieval Cologne, but was destroyed during an air raid during the Second World War. In the 1950s, a chapel was built here, in which a miraculously surviving limestone statue of Our Lady was kept.

Among the most valuable exhibits of the museum are paintings, drawings, engravings, sculptures, works of decorative and applied art and icons from antiquity to the present day. With the exception of a few works on permanent display, exhibitions change regularly.