Historical Archive of the City of Cologne photographs of 284 charters from the Cologne archive. Directors of the Cologne municipal archive: Historical Archive of the City of Cologne The Historical Archive of the City of Cologne (, or for short) is the municipal archive of Cologne, Germany. It ranks among the largest communal archives in Europe. A municipal archive has existed in Cologne since the Middle Ages. The oldest inventory of charters in the archive is dated 1408/1409. The oldest document kept in the archive is a charter dated AD 922. The archive contains official records and private documents from all ages of Cologne history, as well
Historical Archive of the City of Cologne Rhine-Westphalia is based on the "Archivgesetz des Landes NRW" bill of 1989. The municipal archive of Cologne is also governed by the municipal archive ordinance "Archivsatzung" (last revised in 2007). The federal "Bundesarchivgesetz" bill does not apply. An early programme of holding archival records in Cologne was the so-called "Schreinswesen" (shrine system), used for documenting citizens' rights. A "Schrein" (shrine, from Latin "scrinium") was a wooden chest or cabinet where parish administrations stored records and charters. Such shrines were used for records storage throughout the Middle Ages and into early modern times, most notably in the parish of St. Lawrence