Overstolzenhaus

Architectural studies date the house to around 1230. It was built by Blithildis Overstolz (1175–1255), a daughter of the dynasty's founder Gottschalk Overstolz. Her husband, the knight Werner von der Schuren, had taken the name Overstolz upon their marriage. After he rose to the college of aldermen, the couple built the house both as a memorial and for the commercial use of their merchant family. The Overstolz family were wealthy merchants who played an important mediating role in the conflict between Cologne's citizens and the Church.

In the city's property records, the building bore the knight's name and was known as Haus zur Scheuren until 1257. In 1255 Werner and Blithildis bequeathed it to their son Johannes Overstolz.

The house measures 19.50 metres long and 14.50 metres wide, with the broader side aisle spanning 7.50 metres. The lower half of the façade is original, and the overall form is regarded as an outstanding example of German Romanesque architecture. The building comprises a two-aisled cellar, two residential floors and four storage floors. Reception and administrative rooms lay below, while above—behind glassless, richly decorated windows—stood the grand hall. One room still preserves a Romanesque wall painting with a secular subject: knightly tournament scenes, a rare example of decoration from this period. The imposing stepped gable crowns the façade. The Overstolzenhaus is the only surviving Romanesque patrician house in Cologne and is considered the largest and architecturally most elaborate in Germany.

Unlike the courtyard side, the street façade was elaborately designed, with variously shaped, decorated windows and a stepped gable. The altered ground floor now shows five rectangular windows beneath round-arched blind arcades with inset columns. The upper floor has five double-arcade windows with slender columns and leaf capitals, originally closable with wooden shutters, topped by small round windows. A so-called trefoil blind arcade forms a continuous frame around them.