Opera Passages

The Opera Passages are a shopping arcade completed in 1964 in Cologne's Old Town North, initially named "Swiss Shopping City" and later "Cologne Shopping City."
Construction began in the spring of 1961 on a 6,900 m² rubble site owned by the 4711 company. The architect of the "horizontally layered urban element" was the in-house architect of 4711, Wilhelm Koep. The plan was for a shopping center interspersed with passageways and a multi-story parking garage. The construction costs amounted to 30 million marks. On October 17, 1964, the passage equipped with a visibly external honeycomb facade, initially called "Swiss Shopping City," was opened. According to the inaugural speech by Cologne's mayor Theo Burauen, the layered combination of the department store, passage, and parking garage was intended to "make the city center attractive and lively and counteract the trend of building large shopping centers on the outskirts." The usable area of 32,000 m² originally housed 69 retail shops, a bank, and a gas station. The parking garage had 600 parking spaces. Also included in the construction plans was the Theater am Dom with 376 seats, where Peter Ustinov's comedy "Endspurt" premiered on October 29, 1964. At its opening, the shopping city was the first shopping arcade in Germany.

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