Overstolzenhaus is one of Cologne's great survivals: a 13th-century patrician house from a city whose medieval domestic architecture was largely erased by war and rebuilding. Its stepped gable and Romanesque stonework stand on Rheingasse, slightly hidden from the bigger cathedral-and-Rhine circuit.
You do not need long here, but it is worth a detour if you enjoy architecture that tells a quieter story than the city's churches. The house hints at the wealth of Cologne's medieval merchant families, when the city was a trading power and its private houses could be as self-confident as civic monuments.