I love swimming! Diving into a pool with sparkling blue water on an early summer morning just makes me happy. In Cologne, opportunities to swim without going too far away from the city centre are quite limited though.
While I prefer the very centrally located Agrippabad during the winter months, I highly recommend a visit to the Stadionbad in Müngersdorf during the summer.
The swimming pool is part of a vast sports grounds. Here you will find Cologne’s soccer stadium (Rheinenergie-Stadion), the German Sports Academy (Sporthochschule) and other competition venues. The whole area was planned and realized in the 1920s by the landscape architect Fritz Encke, to whom Cologne owes almost all its municipal parks.
You enter the swimming pool through a new entrance hall, which was built in the course of the last modernisation works. However, the character of the old-fashioned outdoor pool has been carefully preserved. Already as a child I was overwhelmed by the extensive axial structure with the several swimming pools, a diving platform and the concrete spectator stands. This has remained unchanged to this day and I try to come here as often as possible to swim a few lengths. After my exercise, I love to sit in the sun and watch the kids jump into the blue water from the diving tower.
