Living in Bayenthal, Cologne

Bayenthal sits in the Rodenkirchen Stadtbezirk, on the left bank of the Rhine immediately south of the Innenstadt. The railway line that runs to the Südbrücke separates it from Neustadt-Süd to the north, Raderberg lies to the west, Marienburg to the south, the Rhine to the east. Around ten and a half thousand people live in its 1.28 square kilometres - four times the density of Marienburg next door, which tells you most of what you need to know about the difference between the two.

What it is

An old industrial suburb turned residential. The Kölnische Maschinenbau AG opened here in 1856 and employed fifteen hundred people by 1864, building machinery and steel structures including the roof frame of Cologne Cathedral; it was taken over in 1909 and eventually absorbed into other firms. A timber mill and several breweries worked here too, the Adler and Hirsch breweries merging in 1931. Workers' housing went up along Alteburger Straße, and over the twentieth century the factories left and the housing stayed. What remains is a compact grid of four and five-storey blocks - some Wilhelminian, a lot of post-war reconstruction, some recent infill - with Goltsteinstraße running through the middle as the commercial spine. The Rhine is at the eastern edge, but the Gustav-Heinemann-Ufer, a dual-carriageway trunk road, runs between the houses and the water.

Who lives here

A broad middle: office and public-sector employees, tradespeople, families in long-held flats, students and young professionals who wanted the Südstadt without the Südstadt rent, and a substantial older population. It is more mixed than Marienburg and calmer than Neustadt-Süd, and it has one of the better supplies of ordinary rented flats in the south of the city, which means rooms in shared flats do come up. Turnover is moderate: people who move to Bayenthal tend to stay for years.

What it's like during the day

Normal, busy, self-sufficient. Goltsteinstraße does the work of a small town centre - two full-range supermarkets, a discounter, an organic supermarket, a drugstore chain, several bakeries, a butcher, cafés with pavement tables. Side streets are residential and reasonably quiet. There is no large park inside the district, so the green options are the Rhine embankment path on the far side of the trunk road, the Südpark a short walk south in Marienburg, and the Vorgebirgspark to the west. The riverside path itself is excellent: flat, continuous, and a straight run north into the city centre.

What it's like in the evening

Neighbourhood-scale. Bayenthal has restaurants, Italian and Greek and Asian, a few wine bars and a handful of Kneipen along and around Goltsteinstraße, and they fill with locals rather than with people who travelled to get there. It is not a nightlife district and never has been. The Südstadt, which is the nightlife district for this whole side of the city, is two or three tram stops north, and Chlodwigplatz is close enough to walk back from on a good night.

Getting around

Stadtbahn lines 16 and 17 run through the district on the riverside axis, stopping at Schönhauser Straße in the middle and Bayenthalgürtel at the southern boundary. Northwards they reach Ubierring and Chlodwigplatz in a couple of minutes and continue via Barbarossaplatz and Poststraße to Neumarkt, roughly a quarter of an hour from the door; southwards line 16 runs down the west bank towards Wesseling and Bonn, and line 17 to Rodenkirchen and Sürth. Bus lines 106, 130, 132, 133 and 134 fill in the streets away from the tram. Cycling is the real advantage: the Rhine path takes you into the centre in fifteen minutes without a single hill. Crossing the Gustav-Heinemann-Ufer on foot needs a crossing point, so check where the nearest one is before you commit to a flat.

Eating and shopping

Goltsteinstraße covers everything - supermarkets at several price levels, an organic market, a chemist, bakeries on both sides, a butcher, a florist. There is an Asian grocer on Marktstraße and further supermarkets on Bonner Straße at the western edge. Restaurants are the reliable kind rather than the fashionable kind, and prices sit below the Südstadt. For a bigger choice you go north into the Südstadt, which is close enough to count as an extension of the neighbourhood.

When NOT to pick it

Do not pick it if you want the Rhine at your window: the trunk road along the bank is loud and the water is on the other side of it, so the riverside flats are the noisiest in the district. Do not pick it if you want a big park inside the boundaries, or nightlife inside walking distance, or period architecture in unbroken rows - the war and the post-war rebuild took a lot of the old stock. Do not pick it if you want the cheapest rooms in Cologne, because the south of the city is not where they are. If you want more life and more bars, look north to the Südstadt end of Neustadt-Süd; if you want the same tram for less money, look west to Raderberg or Zollstock; if you want quiet and space and can pay for it, look south to Marienburg.

Bayenthal is the right choice if you want a settled, well-supplied, walkable neighbourhood with a real high street, a fast tram and a bike route into town along the river, without paying Südstadt prices for it. For young professionals, couples and small families who want to be near the centre but not in it, it is one of the most practical addresses on this side of Cologne.