On a warm Ju­ly even­ing, Co­logne is il­lu­min­ated in a very spe­cial light dur­ing one of the most beau­ti­ful mu­sic­al fire­work dis­plays in Ger­many. The ?Co­logne Lights? is an an­nu­al dis­play of fire­works, Bengal lights, wa­ter­falls and hun­dreds of thou­sands of spark­lers. In front of the main dis­play, a con­voy of 50 fest­ively lit boats from Co­logne-Porz moves down the Rhine to­wards the in­ner city. It is greeted by dif­fer­ent fire­work dis­plays on land.

At the grand fi­nale at around 11.30 pm, the im­ages light up the sky ac­com­pan­ied by mu­sic. The mu­sic­al theme changes from year to year. Some­times, the huge loud­speak­er towers to the left and right of the Rhine play mu­sic from the 1970s, and some­times film tunes. The rhythms are re­in­forced by the fir­ing of the pyro­tech­nics in time to the mu­sic. A soph­ist­ic­ated com­puter pro­gram trig­gers the shots in­to the sky down to a hun­dredth of a second ac­cur­acy.

The mu­sic­al pro­gramme already be­gins dur­ing the af­ter­noon, with free con­certs on the Tan­zbrunnen stage.

Dur­ing the even­ing, a large num­ber of ship­ping com­pan­ies of­fer spe­cial tours of the Co­logne Lights on the Rhine. For those want­ing to watch the spec­tacle on the wa­ter, early book­ing is re­com­men­ded.

The Co­logne Lights are one of the largest syn­chron­ous mu­sic­al fire­work dis­plays in Ger­many. Every year, around 800,000 people come to the banks of the Rhine in Co­logne to watch the spec­tacle.

The next dates:
13 Ju­ly 2019
18 Ju­ly 2020

www.koel­ner-lichter.de