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Old Market

The Old Market is in the north of the old town and the most traditional place in the city. It is the hub of the old town and one can find several restaurants, cafes and pubs here.

Concise at the Old Market is the town hall tower, which is richly decorated. Below the clock is an elongated wooden mask, the "Platz-Jabbeck". This stretches out the tongue every hour on the hour and wants to show a charming Kölsch "You can kiss my a**". This is supposed to show the honesty between the residents and the authorities.

Besides the Rhine, carnival is also part of Cologne. On 11.11. at 11:11 o'clock the carnival season is proclaimed every year since 1953 on the old market and on Weiberfastnacht the street carnival. The Old Market crystallizes every year as the starting and ending point of the carnival parades.

The market is also adorned by the Jan von Werth fountain. According to legend, Jan von Werth was a simple peasant boy who was not refined enough for the maid Gried. Because of this disdain he went to the Thirty Years War and came back as a victorious riding general and the maid Gried sat as a flower seller at the town gate and regretted not having married him.

Furthermore, various historical details have been preserved, such as the bizarre sculpture "Kallendressers" (High German: someone who performs his emergency urination in the gutter) at house number 24. Two legends circulate about this sculpture. One says that this is how two politicians who live across the street show their opinions to each other. The other one says that there were two quarreling citizens who lived on top of each other. The lower citizen always played the tuba very loudly with the windows open and the legend says that the other wanted to silence him.

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