Heiliggeisthaus

The sheer number of people it supported points to substantial resources. Donated money regularly flowed into houses, land, and rents to secure ongoing care, and wealthy cathedral canons remembered the house in their wills. Between 1310 and 1350, of 38 detailed testaments granting bequests, 26 named hospitals and 24 named the poor—twelve of the latter went to the Heiliggeisthaus alone. Between 1563 and 1588 it was Cologne's largest ecclesiastical creditor of rents, and in 1614 it acquired the Schiffhof estate at Höningen through a bequest from Elisabeth von Krebs.

Seen from the east, a pointed archway flanked by two tall lancet windows led inside, with a row of three small round-arched windows above and a cross crowning the small gabled roof over the chapel. After a fire in 1463, the chapel and hospital were rebuilt by 1478. The Hacht adjoined it on one side, a guesthouse on the other, with the caretaker's house behind. Arnold Mercator's 1570 city view shows the hospital on the south side of the cathedral, in the western part of the Domhof.

Secularization sealed its fate: a prefectural decree of 17 January 1802 transferred administration to the poorhouse's charity office, and on 23 September 1802 its status as an institution was formally abolished. Sold around 1840, the site gave way to the Dom Hotel, which opened on 28 November 1857.