Art in Cologne's Old Town: Wallraf, Kolumba, Schnütgen and Kollwitz

This tour takes you through four Cologne art collections in a single day, all just a few minutes' walk from one another. Instead of ticking off as many museums as possible, you take your time with each one and travel through several centuries of art history along the way.

The day starts at the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum near City Hall, where you have plenty of time in the morning for the painting collection, which runs from the Middle Ages to Impressionism. After lunch nearby, you head to Kolumba, the art museum of the Archdiocese, housed in a new building above the remains of a church destroyed in the war, where old and new works come together in quiet rooms. Next, you stroll to the Museum Schnütgen, which displays medieval sculptures, stained-glass windows and church treasures in the Romanesque church of St. Cäcilien. A coffee break separates this part of the day from the final visit, the Käthe Kollwitz Museum on Neumarkt, which is devoted to the drawings, prints and sculptures of a single artist.

The tour suits you if you're mainly interested in art and prefer to look at things at a relaxed pace rather than rushing from stop to stop. The distances are short and easy to cover on foot; the cathedral is within sight but deliberately not the focus.