A place

Judengasse

2 stories from this place.

The Footnote June 25, 2026 · Rathausplatz, Cologne

The Medieval Jewish Ritual Bath That Sat Beneath the Cologne Town Hall for Six Hundred Years Before Anyone Looked at It

A 12th-century Jewish mikvah — a stone-vaulted ritual bath approximately 17 metres below ground level — sits directly beneath the Rathausplatz in central Cologne. It survived the 1349 destruction of the surrounding Jewish quarter, was buried under post-pogrom Christian construction, and was rediscovered in 1956 during post-war reconstruction.

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The Footnote June 24, 2026 · Rathausplatz, Cologne

The Twelfth-Century Mikveh Discovered Under the Cologne Town Hall Square in 1956

The medieval Cologne Jewish ritual bath — a 13.5-metre-deep stone shaft sunk to reach groundwater — was rediscovered during 1956 building works in the cathedral-square excavations. It is substantially the only substantially intact 12th-century mikveh north of the Alps and substantively defines the standing archaeology of the medieval Cologne Jewish community.

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