Judensau at the choir stalls of Cologne Cathedral

The Eurovision Young Musicians 2016 was the eighteenth edition of the Eurovision Young Musicians contest, which took place on 3 September 2016, outside the Cologne Cathedral, in Cologne, Germany. For a second consecutive time, German public broadcaster Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR) was the host broadcaster for the event, with Daniel Hope and Tamina Kallert being the presenters for the show. Musicians representing eleven countries with European Broadcasting Union (EBU) membership, participated in the contest, with San Marino making their debut, while Greece, Moldova, Netherlands, and Portugal decided not to participate in this edition. The candidates were accompanied by the WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne, conducted by Clemens Schuldt. A five-person jury decided which of the participants would be awarded with the top-three prizes. Łukasz Dyczko of Poland won the contest, with Czech Republic and Austria placing second and third respectively.

The Archdiocese of Cologne (Latin: Archidioecesis Coloniensis; German: Erzbistum Köln) is an archdiocese of the Catholic Church in western North Rhine-Westphalia and northern Rhineland-Palatinate in Germany.

Cologne Cathedral (German: Kölner Dom, officially Hohe Domkirche Sankt Petrus, English: Cathedral Church of Saint Peter) is a Catholic cathedral in Cologne, North Rhine-Westphalia. It is the seat of the Archbishop of Cologne and of the administration of the Archdiocese of Cologne. It is a renowned monument of German Catholicism and Gothic architecture and was declared a World Heritage Site in 1996. It is Germany's most visited landmark, attracting an average of 20,000 people a day. At 157 m (515 ft), the cathedral is currently the tallest twin-spired church in the world, the second tallest church in Europe after Ulm Minster, and the third tallest church in the world. It is the largest Gothic church in Northern Europe and has the second-tallest spires. The towers for its two huge spires give the cathedral the largest façade of any church in the world. The choir has the largest height-to-width ratio, 3.6:1, of any medieval church.Construction of Cologne Cathedral began in 1248 but was halted in the years around 1560, unfinished. Work did not restart until the 1840s, and the edifice was completed to its original Medieval plan in 1880.Cologne's medieval builders had planned a grand structure to house the reliquary of the Three Kings and fit its role as a place of worship for the Holy Roman Emperor. Despite having been left incomplete during the medieval period, Cologne Cathedral eventually became unified as "a masterpiece of exceptional intrinsic value" and "a powerful testimony to the strength and persistence of Christian belief in medieval and modern Europe". Only the telecommunications tower is higher than the Cathedral.

The Cologne Cathedral Window is the stained glass window in the south transept of the Cologne Cathedral designed by Cologne artist Gerhard Richter. On a surface of 106 square metres 11.263 glass squares in 72 colours of 9,6 cm × 9.6 cm were principally arranged randomly, with others selected in response to architectural context. The window was inaugurated on August 25, 2007 as part of a Eucharistic celebration; the abstract execution was both celebrated and strongly criticized.

The Shrine of the Three Kings (German Dreikönigsschrein or Der Dreikönigenschrein), Tomb of the Three Kings, or Tomb of the Three Magi is a reliquary traditionally believed to contain the bones of the Biblical Magi, also known as the Three Kings or the Three Wise Men. The shrine is a large gilded and decorated triple sarcophagus placed above and behind the high altar of Cologne Cathedral in western Germany. Built approximately from 1180 to 1225, it is considered the high point of Mosan art and the largest reliquary in the Western world.

The Reifferscheider Hof or Linneper Hof (inaccurate also frequent: Lenneper Hof) was a manor of the Reifferscheid, Linnep, Sayn-Wittgenstein and Grafschaft Neuenahr families in erbvogteilichen Hacht district on the Domhof in Cologne, which was laid down in the 1740s. It was inhabited by members of the Cologne Cathedral Chapter and was a emphyteusis of the cathedral monastery. Today, the area is part of the grounds of the Romano-Germanic Museum.

The Roman-Germanic Museum (RGM, in German: Römisch-Germanisches Museum) is an archaeological museum in Cologne, Germany. It has a large collection of Roman artifacts from the Roman settlement of Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensium, on which modern Cologne is built. The museum protects the original site of a Roman town villa, from which a large Dionysus mosaic remains in its original place in the basement, and the related Roman Road just outside. In this respect the museum is an archaeological site. The museum also has the task of preserving the Roman cultural heritage of Cologne, and therefore houses an extensive collection of Roman glass from funerals and burials and also exercises archaeological supervision over the construction of the Cologne underground. Most of the museum's collection was housed at the Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne until 1946. In the front of the museum the former northern town gate of Cologne with the inscription CCAA (for Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensium) is on display in the building.

Dom/Hauptbahnhof station (English: Cathedral/Main Station, sometimes abbreviated as Dom/Hbf) is an underground station on lines 5, 16 and 18 of the Cologne Stadtbahn system. The station is located under the southwest corner of the Köln Hauptbahnhof, the city's main railway station and along the northern edge of the Cologne Cathedral (German: Kölner Dom). The station opened in 1968 as part of the first phase of the Innenstadt (English: inner city) Stadtbahn tunnel, and was one of the first underground stations in Cologne.

Over 1,200 women were reportedly sexually assaulted during the 2015–16 public New Year's Eve's celebrations in Germany, in most cases by men of non-European origin. Multiple women reported being raped. In many of the incidents, women in public places had been surrounded and assaulted by groups of men. The Bundeskriminalamt (German Federal Criminal Police) confirmed in July 2016 that 1,200 women had been sexually assaulted on that New Year's night.By 4 January 2016, the German national media reported that in Cologne, the sexual assaulters had mostly been described as "North African", "Arab", "dark-skinned" and "foreign". On 5 January 2016, the German government and the Cologne police speculated that the attacks might have been organized. However, by 21 January, the North Rhine-Westphalian government declared that there were no indications of premeditated organized attacks, and on 11 February, the new Cologne police president stated the same. Instead, the Cologne police chief suggested that the perpetrators had come from countries where such sexual assaults by groups of men are common. That suggestion was confirmed in a Federal Criminal Police report in June 2016, which also identified five more factors contributing to the occurrence of the attacks: group pressure, absence of police intervention, frustrations of migrants, disinhibition caused by alcohol and/or drug use, and disinhibition due to lack of social ties with German society.By April 2016, statistics recorded by authorities indicated that out of the identified 153 suspects in Cologne who were convicted of sexual offenses and other crimes during New Year's Eve 2015–16, two-thirds were originally from Morocco or Algeria, 44% were asylum seekers, another 12% were likely to have been in Germany illegally, and 3% were underaged unaccompanied refugees. By July 2016, the police stated that half of the 120 identified suspects of sexual offences on the New Year's Eve had arrived in Germany during the year 2015, most of those 120 had come from North Africa, and four suspects nationwide had been convicted. By November 2016, around 200 suspects of the sexual assaults had been identified nationwide.

Saint Peter's bell (orig. German: Petersglocke [ˌzaŋkt ˈpeːtɐs ˌɡlɔkə]), referred to in the Colognian dialect as Decke Pitter or Dekke Pitter (Colognian: [ˌdekə ˈpitˑɐ] (listen)) and in common parlance as Dicker Pitter (German: [ˈdɪkɐ ˈpɪtɐ]; i.e. "Fat or Big Peter"), is the largest bell in Cologne Cathedral. It was cast in 1923 by Heinrich Ulrich in Apolda and hangs in the belfry of the south tower. With a weight of approximately 24,000 kilograms (53,000 lb), a clapper weighing ~700 kilograms (1,500 lb) and a diameter of 322 centimetres (10 ft 7 in), it is the second largest (horizontally mounted) freely swinging ringable bell in the world, after the bell of the People's Salvation Cathedral.

Köln Hauptbahnhof or Cologne Central Station is a railway station in Cologne, Germany. The station is an important local, national and international transport hub, with many ICE, Thalys and Intercity trains calling there, as well as regional Regional-Express, RegionalBahn and local S-Bahn trains. EuroNight and Nightjet night services also call at the station. It has frequent connections to Frankfurt by way of the Cologne–Frankfurt high-speed rail line, which starts in southern Cologne. On an average day, about 280,000 travellers frequent the station, making it the fifth busiest station in Germany.The station is situated next to Cologne Cathedral. There is another important station in Cologne, the Köln Messe/Deutz station across the river Rhine, just about 400 metres away from Köln Hauptbahnhof. The stations are linked by the Hohenzollern Bridge, a six-track railway bridge with pedestrian and bicycle lanes on each side. Frequent local services connect the two stations.

The finials of Cologne Cathedral form the tops of the two towers (north and south towers) at a height of 149 to 157 metres. A copy of this finial in original size, but made of concrete, has stood below the steps in front of the west façade of the cathedral since 1991.