Offenbachplatz
Offenbachplatz is a public square in central Cologne, surrounded by major streets and close to the city’s shopping district. Its two sections frame the opera house and playhouse. Wilhelm Riphahn and Hans Menne designed the opera house, while the playhouse joined the ensemble between 1960 and 1962. A pavilion once housed the Opernterrassen theatre restaurant.
Post-war planning shaped the square along Cologne’s North-South thoroughfare, conceived in the mid-1950s. Jürgen Hans Grümmer completed the paving and public-art design in 1967. Grey, white, and red paving surrounds blue and gold mosaic fragments, ceramic surfaces, seating blocks, steps, and planters. A bronze plaque marks the former synagogue destroyed during the 1938 pogrom, where Jacques Offenbach’s father served as cantor.
At the centre, a round reinforced-concrete fountain carries ceramic and glass mosaics. Its central jet rises inside a ring of smaller nozzles. Ceramic mosaics include pieces from Aristotle Onassis’s yacht and Berlin’s destroyed Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church. In front of the playhouse, Émile-Antoine Bourdelle’s bronze sculpture Sappho adds another striking detail.
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- Cologne
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