Basilica of St. Ursula, Cologne, Germany

The Basilica church of St. Ursula was is built upon the ancient ruins of a Roman cemetery. The church has an impressive reliquary created from the bones of the former occupants of the cemetery. It is one of the twelve Romanesque churches of Cologne and was designated a Minor Basilica in 1920. While the nave and crossing tower are Romanesque, the choir has been rebuilt in the Gothic style.

The Golden Chamber, or Goldene Kammer, of the church contains the alleged remains of St. Ursula and her 11,000 virgins who are said to have been killed by the Huns, possibly around the time of the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains. The original legend said only 11 virgins accompanied St. Ursula but the number grew over time, eventually to 11,000. The walls of the Golden Chamber are covered in bones arranged in designs and/or letters along with relic skulls. The exact number of people whose remains are in the Golden Chamber remains ambiguous but the number of skulls in the reliquary is greater than 11 and less than 11,000. These remains were found in 1106 in a mass grave and were assumed to be those of the legend of St. Ursula and the 11,000 virgins. Therefore, the church constructed the Golden Chamber to house the bones. The bones themselves are neatly arranged in 'zigzags and swirls and even in the shapes of Latin words.'

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When are Saturday and Sunday Masses held?

User Reviews

Victoria Page (7 months ago)
Room with bones is beautiful in a creepy way, mind blowing place. It makes sense to wach some youtube video about the story.

Jeronimas (11 months ago)
Beautiful Church and amazing artefacts. It's worth a visit!

Steve Ginther (11 months ago)
Beautiful church with a mixture of baroque and Gothic architecture. If you have a chance to visit the Golden chamber it is not to be missed. Very friendly parishioner took my €2 and very amiably showed me the chamber and pointed out highlights of the restoration. Not to be missed! Also aside from a beautiful church I found it a very sacred place to pray.

Jay Marciano (12 months ago)
A five-minute walk from Cologne Cathedral, the Church of St. Ursula is definitely worth a visit, particularly the Golden Chamber (Goldener Kammer), which is decorated with skeletal remains that were found on the building site and, according to legend, belonged to St. Ursula and 11,000 virgins who were martyred there, two statements that don't stand up to scrutiny particularly well. (For one , when you build a church on the site of a Roman cemetery, you might consider the possibility that the bones were of Romans who had lived in Colognia. And for that matter, even the number of martyred virgins in the legend of St. Ursula was likely inflated by a factor of 1000 due to a misreading of some Latin. Not to mention that there aren't even close to enough bones to make up 11,000 human bodies.) Nevertheless, the church is worth a visit to see the elaborate arrangement of bones and the decorated skulls. (Note: when I visited in March of 2024, it cost €2 per person to enter the Golden Chamber.)

MATTHEW CADMAN (2 years ago)
Beautiful Church with a great background, lovely stations of the cross paintings and very impressively creepy chapel (bones x million). The Church's guardians are lovely and eager to tell of the Ursula legend. The Google times are wrong though. The metal rood screen is closed at 4 not 5, so you can't look all around if you're a little late.

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