Hotel du Nord

The site had previously housed the Germanische Hof inn before the hotel opened in December 1859. Carl Friedrich Mann initially ran the establishment, advertising several hundred rooms by the mid-1860s and billing his house as Cologne's "first and largest" hotel. In 1868 it changed hands for 390,000 Thaler; a guest register from 1878 lists Hasenclever as owner. Owing to strong demand, the hotel was enlarged several times over the following decades.

The building stood on the south side of the left-bank approach ramp to the Hohenzollern Bridge. The complex extended well beyond the Frankenplatz building itself: following expansions in the 1870s and 1880s, a tall guest wing ran the full length of the block to Bischofsgartenstraße.

Notable figures numbered among the hotel's guests. The house was a favored lodging of the Hohenzollern family, and the Danish poet Hans Christian Andersen stayed here during his time in Cologne.

Fritz Westendorp captured the hotel's 1917 appearance in a painting, basing his preliminary sketches on the view from one of the bridge towers at the left-bank end of the Hohenzollern Bridge. The hotel closed in 1923 and was demolished in 1925. What remained of the structures fell victim to bombing in the Second World War and was cleared away when the cathedral hill was opened up. The Domplatte was built over the site, and Frankenplatz street has since run through a tunnel. Today the Museum Ludwig, erected in 1986, and Heinrich-Böll-Platz occupy the spot; nothing remains of the original buildings.