Staatenhaus am Rheinpark
Listed 1920s event hall in Cologne-Deutz – currently the temporary home of the Cologne Opera and a future musical theatre.
The Staatenhaus am Rheinpark is a listed event building in the Cologne district of Deutz, sitting right next to the Koelnmesse trade-fair halls, the Tanzbrunnen grounds and the Rheinpark. Since 2015 it has served as the temporary venue of the Cologne Opera, and it is slated to be converted into a musical theatre.
At a glance
- Location
- Cologne-Deutz, adjacent to the Koelnmesse, Tanzbrunnen and Rheinpark
- Built
- original rotunda-style building from the 1920s (for the 1928 Pressa exhibition)
- Architect
- Adolf Abel
- Heritage status
- listed monument
- Usable area
- around 16,900 square metres, room for up to 12,000 people
- Current use
- temporary venue of the Cologne Opera (since 2015)
- Notable feature
- daylight-flooded exhibition rooms, a brick façade and an open arcade dividing the building
Architecture
The structure has two naves, combining a hall with a colonnade running alongside it. At its centre, an open arcade visually splits the building into two halves. Its hallmarks are the daylight-filled exhibition rooms and the brick façade, while the curved ground plan echoes the shape of the garden and park roundels laid out in front of it.
History
After the Cologne trade-fair halls opened in May 1924, Adolf Abel was commissioned in autumn 1926 to draw up conversion and expansion plans that would create extra space for the major 1928 Pressa exhibition. He designed a low, single-storey, elongated building that adjoined the fair courtyard to the north. It gained its name during the Pressa, when it served as a presentation building for the participating states. A year later the Deutscher Künstlerbund held its 25th annual exhibition here, with 150 participants and 322 exhibits.
The rooms, badly damaged in the Second World War, were restored during the 1950s. At the exhibitors' request the building was linked to the main fair building via a connecting hall; as part of the trade fair it then operated as Halls 6, 7 and 8, and for a time as the Rheinpark Halls. Since 2010 the independent venue has borne the name Staatenhaus am Rheinpark.
Events
Over the years the spacious venue has hosted congresses, conferences, meetings, trade fairs, concerts and social or carnival events. In 2011 it staged 46 events with roughly 78,000 visitors. Guests included the ART.FAIR art fair, the fvw congress for tourism and business travel, and Tommy Engel's Christmas Angel show.
Future as a musical theatre
In the long term the Staatenhaus is to be converted into a musical theatre with 1,800 seats, plus an additional exhibition area of 1,200 square metres. The original plan was to hand the building over to the BB Group under a heritable building right in the summer of 2015. Because the renovation of the Cologne Opera's Riphahn building on Offenbachplatz was not finished in time, the city of Cologne postponed the project – and since the 2015/16 season the opera has used the hall as its interim stage.
Gallery
Map
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Address
Kennedy-Ufer 17
50679 Köln
Hours
Mo: 18:00–23:00
Di: 18:00–23:00
Mi: 18:00–23:00
Do: 18:00–23:00
Fr: 18:00–23:00
Sa: 18:00–23:00
So: 18:00–23:00
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Sources & links
Auto-generated, last verified: 2026-07-19
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