Romano-Germanic Museum, Archaeological museum in Altstadt-Nord, Cologne, Germany
The Romano-Germanic Museum is an archaeological institution in the old town of Cologne presenting finds from before Roman times to the early Middle Ages. It holds objects from excavations across the Rhineland, including pottery, jewelry, weapons and mosaics that trace life in the Roman province of Lower Germania.
The collection began in 1807 when French authorities gathered Roman burial monuments to save them from destruction. The current building opened in 1974 after workers building an air-raid shelter in 1941 discovered a Roman villa with a well-preserved floor mosaic.
The collection holds over 4,000 complete Roman glass vessels from the 1st to 4th centuries, among them the 4th-century Cologne cage cup and drinking beakers decorated with attached drops of contrasting colour, known as Cologne nubs. Franconian glass and new finds from Cologne's Roman necropolises keep enlarging it.
The institution currently operates from Belgian House on Cäcilienstraße while the main building near the cathedral undergoes renovation. Visitors should check the temporary address before heading there, since many still go to the old location beside the Dom.
The mosaic was uncovered in 1941 during construction of the cathedral air-raid shelter, and the bunker was kept so the floor stayed in place. A cut in the bunker ceiling gives the view down onto it from Roncalliplatz. Cyclone Kyrill drove a sheet of plywood through the museum's glass front onto the mosaic in January 2007; the damage was repaired within a week.
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