Wilhelmplatz

In the 1860s and 1870s the almost square plot of roughly 3,500 m² probably belonged to a brickworks and served, among other things, as a sandpit. In 1898 – ten years after Nippes was incorporated into Cologne – the city bought the land, and in 1899 the roughly 3,000 m² Wilhelmplatz was created here to plans by Cologne's city building councillor Hermann Josef Stübben.

During the National Socialist era, members of the Hitler Youth and the League of German Girls used the square as a meeting point; Jewish residents were harassed and deported here. In the Second World War, Allied bombing destroyed many of the buildings around the square, among them the Nippes post office built in 1898, one of the oldest and most distinctive structures. Badly damaged, it was rebuilt in 1950 in a much simplified form. During a comprehensive redesign in 1992, a multifunctional building was added on the north side; at its inauguration in May 1992, the then mayor Norbert Burger gave it the name "Nippeser Tadsch Mahal" (Nippes Taj Mahal).