Weißhaus
The Weißhaus is a medieval moated castle in Cologne's Sülz district on Luxemburger Straße; its park-enclosed, moat-ringed grounds are today in private ownership and not open to the public.
At the edge of Cologne's Grüngürtel, on Luxemburger Straße in the Sülz district, the Weißhaus sits behind a wall and a moat – a medieval moated castle that is hard to take in fully from the passing street. Only the wrought-iron railing facing the road offers a view of the front sections of the grounds.
At a Glance
- Location
- Sülz, Luxemburger Straße, at the edge of the Grüngürtel (Lindenthal district)
- Type
- medieval moated castle with a chapel
- First mentioned
- 1378, in a deed of the Abbey of St. Pantaleon
- Oldest surviving part
- octagonal stair tower with a baroque cap (from the earlier 1619 building)
- Grounds today
- a roughly 20,800 m² walled park with a moat of about 5,600 m²
- Access
- privately owned and not open to the public
History
The site belonged to the abbots of the Benedictine Abbey of St. Pantaleon, founded in 957, who later used the estate outside the gates of Cologne as a summer residence. Because it lay beyond the fortified city on the road to Trier, it was repeatedly at risk: in 1474 the city of Cologne had it demolished for safety during the Neuss War, as the army of Charles the Bold advanced. Rebuilt afterwards, it burned down in 1584, was constructed anew from the ground up from 1613 under Abbot Henricus Spichernagel, and was destroyed again in 1658 by a flood of the Duffesbach stream. It was then laid out as a moated castle, which Abbot Aegidius Romanus expanded into a summer residence in 1669. With secularisation after the Napoleonic Wars the property passed to the state; in 1849 the Cologne merchant Johann Adam Jansen acquired the castle.
The Chapel
Next to the tower stands the neo-Gothic Weißhaus chapel with its rib-vaulted ceiling, which Jansen commissioned from the Cologne architect Vincenz Statz. Its interior was decorated with tempera paintings after designs by the painter and lithographer Johann Anton Ramboux, depicting scenes from the life of the Virgin Mary – from the Annunciation and the Nativity to the Assumption and Coronation. The stained-glass windows portray the Magnificat, again after Ramboux's drawings, and were made in the workshop of Johann Anton Friedrich Baudri. The chapel was consecrated on 10 November 1857 by Cardinal Archbishop Johannes von Geissel.
Architecture and Grounds
The moated manor house has two storeys and a stepped mansard roof. At one of its narrow sides rises the octagonal stair tower with a baroque cap, the oldest surviving element, still dating from the 1619 predecessor; the chapel was added in the 19th century. After damage in the Second World War the castle was rebuilt in several stages until 1953. Two arched bridges cross the roughly 5,600 m² moat, with the north-eastern bridge featuring a richly ornamented wrought-iron gate from the building period around 1669. The overall site of about 20,800 m² lies within a park-like garden enclosed by a wall 2.20 m high.
Setting and Access Today
The Weißhaus lies between Leybergstraße, Rennebergstraße and the green and play area extending Linzer Straße. Since the construction of Luxemburger Straße (1824–1846) the moat is no longer fed by the Duffesbach, which since then is channelled past the castle in pipes beneath the road. The estate remained the private property of the heirs of the entrepreneur Heinrich Wolf, who died in 2010, until May 2019; efforts by local politicians in 2015 to have the city of Cologne buy it and open it to the public failed over a council decision and the asking price. In 2019 the site was sold to the entrepreneur Adam Szpyt. The grounds still cannot be entered – but as a historic building behind wall and railing it remains a well-known landmark along the way through the Grüngürtel.
Map
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Address
Luxemburger Str. 201
50939 Köln
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Auto-generated, last verified: 2026-07-23
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