Excelsior Hotel Ernst

On 16 May 1863, Carl Ernst, „Royal Court Restaurateur at the Central Station", opened his hotel in the centre of Cologne. As early as 1871 he sold it to Friedrich Kracht, a German living in Belgium who had to move from Brussels to Cologne as a consequence of the Franco-Prussian War. After Kracht's death, his wife and son Carl carried on the house, which by then enjoyed a nationwide reputation. In 1884 Carl Kracht even became Prince of the Cologne Carnival. When Emperor Wilhelm I attended the celebrations marking the completion of the cathedral on 16 October 1880, he watched the events from the hotel. In 1889 Carl Kracht married into the Swiss hotelier family Baur in Zurich, owners of the Baur au Lac and the Savoy Baur en Ville; from 1890 he ran the Cologne house and soon became its sole owner.

After the First World War, the hotel served as the headquarters of the British troops for seven years from 6 December 1918. Following their withdrawal in 1926, it was thoroughly renovated (architect Heinrich Müller-Erkelenz) and reopened on 31 December 1926. The house survived the Second World War without major damage; from March 1945 American soldiers were temporarily quartered there, after which the British military administration requisitioned the building until 1948. In June 1948 the hotel resumed operations. From 1950 to 1952 it served as the temporary residence of Turkey's diplomatic mission to the seat of government in Bonn.

Today the grand hotel, run by the sixth-generation Roulet family, has 142 rooms, including 34 suites, across six floors. Following the redesign of the entrance and winter garden in 2013 and the renovation of the Rundbau in 2015, the house combines its historic fabric with contemporary comfort. Its history reaches back to the early days of cinema: much of the silent film „The Beggar of Cologne Cathedral" (1927) is set in the Excelsior.