Demographics of Cologne Demographics of Cologne Cologne () is Germany's fourth-largest city and the largest city in the Rhineland. As of 31 December 2011, there were officially 1,017,155 residents. The city is center of the Cologne/Bonn Region with around 3 million inhabitants (including the neighboring cities of Bonn, Hürth, Leverkusen, and Bergisch Gladbach). The walls of Colonia Agrippina covered an area of 96.8 hectares, but the population density within the walls remains uncertain. Since the construction of the Medieval wall in 1180, the area of the old imperial city of Cologne has not changed for more than 600 years and was only extended
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