Köln_

Cologne pulses with carnival energy and riverside revelry along the Rhine, its iconic Gothic cathedral towering over breweries pouring endless Kölsch. Nomads settle into co-working spaces with high-speed internet, savoring the mild continental climate and easy high-speed train links to Berlin or Amsterdam.

Cologne ( kə-LOHN; German: Köln [kœln] ; Kölsch: Kölle [ˈkœ̂lə] ) is the fourth-most populous city of Germany and the largest city of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia with nearly 1.1 million inhabitants in the city proper and over 3.1 million people in the Cologne Bonn urban region. Centered on the left bank of the Rhine, Cologne is located on the River Rhine (Lower Rhine), about 35 kilometres (22 mi) southeast of the North Rhine-Westphalia state capital Düsseldorf and 22 kilometres (14 mi) northwest of Bonn, the former capital of West Germany. The city's medieval Cologne Cathedral (Kölner Dom) was the world's tallest building from 1880 to 1890 and is today the third-tallest church and tallest cathedral in the world. Cologne is famous for Eau de Cologne, which has been produced in the city since 1709; "cologne" has since come to be a generic term. Cologne was founded and established in Germanic Ubii territory in the 1st century AD as the Roman Colonia Agrippina, hence its name.