The Imperial City of Cologne

One of the most interesting museums of Europe is the Römisch-Germanisches Museum in Cologne. Its peculiar interest is that it contains many archaeological finds—brooches, glass, combs etc—picked out of the rubble after the severe bombing of the Second World War (the present reviewer first saw Cologne in 1951, when much of it was still rubble). Many of these finds help to reveal the material culture, especially of the fourth and fifth centuries, when the city was passing from being a Gallo-Roman city to a Roman-Frankish city. Joseph Huffman does not bring the museum into his story, though he is in general well versed in, and interesting on, the archaeology of Cologne; but what he writes admirably helps to explain what one sees there. Or rather, Huffman’s first phase of the city’s history helps to explain it. In this volume covering over eleven centuries (a further volume is promised), Huffman sees

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