Cologne

Cologne is the fourth most populous city in Germany and the largest in North Rhine-Westphalia, with over a million people in the city proper and over 3.1 million across the Cologne–Bonn urban region. It forms part of the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region, the second biggest in the European Union by GDP, and is centred on the left bank of the Rhine. The cathedral dominates everything (the world’s tallest building from 1880 to 1890, and still the tallest cathedral anywhere) and the view of it from the far bank is the one to walk across for.