Cologne Cologne Cologne (; , , ) is the largest city of Germany's most populous federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia, and its 1,075,935 (2016) inhabitants make it the fourth most populous city in Germany after Berlin, Hamburg, and Munich. The largest city on the Rhine, it is also the most populous city both of the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Region, which is Germany's largest and one of Europe's major metropolitan areas, and of the Rhineland. Centred on the left bank of the Rhine, Cologne is about southeast of North Rhine-Westphalia's capital of Düsseldorf and northwest of Bonn. It is the largest city in
Cologne School of Painting Cologne School of Painting The term Cologne School of Painting was first applied in the 19th century to describe old German paintings generally. It subsequently came to refer more specifically to painters who had their workshops in medieval Cologne and the lower-Rhine region from about 1300 to 1550 (; ). Initially smaller altarpieces such as the Klaren Altar in the Cologne Cathedral from about 1360–70 were created, based on book paintings from around the year 1300 . The mid-15th century is the high-point of this school, when Stefan Lochner (active 1442–1451) created the "Altar of the City Patrons", which is