Cologne Lowland

In the south and southeast the rising Rhine Massif, visible from far off by the silhouette of the Siebengebirge, surround the head of the bight at Königswinter.

While the summers on the upper Rhine are somewhat warmer, winters in the area are so mild that snow remaining on the ground for as much as several days would have been considered rather exceptional in the decades before the onset of the current climatic change.

In combination with the valuable loess soil, these factors make the Cologne Bight one of the most fertile regions of Germany.

About 15 million years ago, these plants died out and formed a peat layer up to 270 metres thick.

The shores of the North Sea in those days occasionally reached up to where the cities of Aachen, Erkelenz, and Mönchengladbach are today.