Trankgassentor Gate

Exactly when the gate was built cannot be established with certainty; at first it may have been confused with a tower mentioned in 1246, which could have resembled the Frankenturm. As a structure in its own right, the Trankgassentor is documented no later than 1293. Anton Woensam's city view of 1531 and Mercator's plan of 1571 both show a building a few metres from the Frankenturm, projecting from the line of the wall like a risalit. The three-storey tower had a round-arched passage and a tent roof. To the south stood a narrow annex, originally topped with battlements, flush with the city wall and rising one storey above it; on the north side another annex, its upper floor resting on the wall, served as a projecting defensive gallery.

The old gate was already considered unsound in 1583 and was pulled down in 1825. After Bernhard Wilhelm Harperath was appointed city architect in 1844, three new gates rose along the old town's riverfront under his direction. The new Trankgassentor was built to his design between 1851 and 1853. It received a double archway and two piers crowned with bronze eagles – piers and eagles taken from a gate then being demolished on Friedrich-Wilhelm-Straße. Yet within a few decades this structure too gave way to the growing city: as the landward walls were removed, the new Cologne Neustadt took shape and a continuous riverside road was laid out, city architect Josef Stübben had the gate demolished for good in 1898. No trace of it remains today.