St. Gereon's Basilica is one of Cologne's twelve great Romanesque churches and among the most architecturally surprising. Its huge decagonal nave rises from a site with late-antique Christian origins, giving the interior a shape and sense of age quite unlike the city's better-known Gothic cathedral.
The basilica rewards visitors who slow down and look beyond Cologne's headline sights. Mosaics, vaulting, and layered masonry tell a story of Roman, medieval, and postwar Cologne in one building. It is an easy walk from the centre and one of the best church interiors in the city after the Dom.