Stadtgarten

A venue for concerts etc. – oldest public park, beer garden and restaurant

Four stages for concert events, a café, a restaurant, a beer garden, a stage for live acts — and more than 400 events every year: the Stadtgarten offers an exciting mix of experiences, thanks to its music programme and culinary events. It’s sure to have something for you if you’re a fan of contemporary improvisation and jazz, ambitious pop and rock music and singer/songwriter acts. It’s also a good choice for people who like restaurants and beer gardens. In warm weather, you can sit here in the wide open-air restaurant area under tall trees, enjoying food, drink and good company in the pleasant ambience of people chatting and having fun. You’ll find that the Stadtgarten offers you a point of contact with excellent options.

Last but not least, the Stadtgarten is located in Cologne’s first modern public park — an inviting location for early-morning jogging as well as walks through the “green lungs” of the city centre. What’s more, during the Christmas season the Stadtgarten offers a cosy and very special Christmas market. The Stadtgarten definitely deserves a big fat cross on your personal location map for unusual places — surrounded by trees and green spaces.

An internationally renowned venue

The Stadtgarten offers a multifaceted and top-quality programme of musical events. It’s known all over Europe as a venue for contemporary and improvisation music. In 2016 it received the national APPLAUSE award for programming in independent venues and the title “Venue of the Year”. In 2022 it received the German Jazz Prize. Here you can listen to cool and adventurous jazz as well as warm and danceable rhythm and blues.

Since 2018 the Stadtgarten has been developed further as a European Center of Jazz and Contemporary Music with the support of the federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia and the City of Cologne. This unique combination of an excellent location and accessibility, catering and technical facilities, as well as funding concepts, has already served as a model and attracted lots of attention in Germany and beyond.

The park

The Cologne venue known as the Stadtgarten, with its music, cosy ambience, and events, is located in the park with which it shares its name. A park with a long tradition, it is framed by Gilbachstraße, Spichernstraße and Venloer Straße. The Belgian Quarter begins south of Venloer Straße. It’s one of Cologne’s most popular residential areas — and also one of the priciest. Along with the Aachener Weiher, the centuries-old Stadtgarten is one of Cologne’s most popular parks and well worth a visit. Especially in late spring, it’s the ideal place for a pleasant stroll through green trees and plants, including many exotics.

The beer garden

The extensive beer garden located in the heart of the Stadtgarten offers plenty of room for many events. In this idyllic spot, visitors can dine under the majestic crowns of tall trees, especially in the warm months. Here you can meet friends, colleagues and visitors to Cologne for a refreshing Kölsch beer to round off the day. On sunny days, the friendly atmosphere and pleasant park surroundings invite visitors to sit, chat and watch the passing scene.

The restaurant

The Stadtgarten restaurant is a popular eating place with a varied menu that includes vegetarian and vegan dishes. It offers seating for up to 80 diners, and reservations are recommended.

The concert venue

The Stadtgarten offers a number of concert venues. At the club — the JAKI – there’s room for a wide variety of musical styles, ranging from jazz to hip-hop, soul, electro and reggae. The special programme “Jazz at JAKI” revives the style of the old jazz clubs in New York.

The “Green Room” offers space for private parties with a stage and live music. The concert hall for musical events, which was opened in 1986, offers plenty of daylight, a wooden floor, and a separate stage entrance. The stage in the Stadtgarten restaurant offers a fourth option for live music.

The Stadtgarten and its history

The Stadtgarten was Cologne’s first public park created in the modern era. It was designed as a decorative garden almost 200 years ago. Coincidentally, it’s located not far from the city’s most recently created park, the Mediapark. The restaurant in the Stadtgarten was built in 1898. The park, whose plantings create a series of landscapes, includes about 50 species of trees and shrubs, some of them exotic. It was meant to provide Cologne’s citizens with opportunities to take recreational walks.

The concert hall, which is also named the Stadtgarten, was established in 1986 thanks to a group of music students with a love for jazz. They founded an organization called “Initiative Kölner Jazz Haus” to promote their plan. This Stadtgarten consists of the concert hall, the café-restaurant, and the live music club, the JAKI. A beer garden and an outdoor restaurant are also part of the complex.

Today this is the venue for about 400 events covering a wide spectrum that includes not only music — with the two focal points of contemporary improvisation music and jazz — but also round table discussions and readings of contemporary literature.

Since 2000 the Förderverein Pro Stadtgarten — an organization consisting of businesspeople, residents of the district, and the operators of the Stadtgarten restaurant — has been working in cooperation with the City of Cologne to restore the Stadtgarten park’s historical function as a public amenity. One result of this initiative is the “sound walks” visitors can take among the sounding sculptures in the Stadtgarten park. If you’re looking for music, the Stadtgarten in the metropolitan heart of Cologne invites you to drop in.