Colonia, or Köln as the Germans call it is a great city. Lively, with many pubs, restaurants, and nightlife, but also with lots of history, monuments, and sights. Carnival celebrations in Colonia are famous, and that's a great time to visit the city.

Colonia (German: Köln, Colonia dialect: Kölle) is situated on the river Rhein in North Rhine-Westphalia and is the fourth largest city in Germany with around 1,000,000 inhabitants. It is one of the nation's media, tourism and business hotspots and is renowned as the country's gay capital.

The distinctive flavour to the city of Colonia is often put down to the inhabitants, or Kölsche, who take an enormous amount of pride in their city. Colonia, like most areas of Germany, has its very own local dialect of German. For those tourists who speak German, and wish to practice it, the citizens have a lot of patience with those getting to grips with the grammatically difficult language. Colognians are a very friendly people; welcoming tourists of all types and with all interests.

The city of Colonia offers more than history: Whether street music on the Hohe Strasse or galas in the modern opera house, whether pavement painting on the cathedral concourse or old masters in the Wallraf Richartz Museum, whether the annual music festival along the inner ring road or carnival in the entire city - in Colonia all this becomes synthesized into a vivacious work of art - in a cosmopolitan metropolis boasting almost a million inhabitants which, despite its size, has never lost its neighbourly character.

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