Hohenzollern Bridge

Cologne's Hohenzollern Bridge is a place of pilgrimage for romantics in love. Tourists and Cologne residents like to immortalise their relationship in the form of love locks on the bridge. As a sign of eternal love and fidelity, they attach their lock to the bridge grating and throw the corresponding key into the Rhine. Thousands of individually decorated love locks now decorate the Rhine bridge.

The Hohenzollern Bridge was built from 1907 to 1911. It consisted of three adjacent truss arch bridges, each with three arches. While one part of the bridge was reserved for road and tram traffic, the other two carried railway tracks. It was the only bridge in Cologne not destroyed by bombs during the Second World War. On 6 March 1945 the Wehrmacht blew up the bridge to make it difficult for the Allies to cross the Rhine.

After the end of the war, one of the two railway bridges was rebuilt and opened in 1948. Between 1956 and 1959 as well as from 1986 to 1987, two more truss arches were added. Today, the Hohenzollern Bridge is a six-track railway bridge and has walkways and cycle paths on both sides.

The predecessor of the Hohenzollern Bridge was the Dom Bridge, built from 1855 to 1859, which could no longer cope with the increasing railway traffic. The bridge, popularly known as "Muusfall", was gradually replaced by the new bridge while traffic continued.