Walking Bonn's Nordstadt from the Sterntor to the Macke house

The Sterntor and the brewery beside it

Sterntor (Bottlerplatz) gave the quarter its name and is the last surviving gate of Bonn's medieval wall, with origins around 1244. What stands today was reassembled in 1900 from the original stones: a squat grey arch with a half-round corner tower and a short stub of city wall, shoppers streaming through the opening. It is outdoors and free at any hour. The small square in front is where walking tours gather, which makes it the easiest place to start a day in Nordstadt.

Brauhaus Bönnsch (Sterntorbrücke 4) has brewed its own unfiltered Bönnsch for 40 years, two minutes from the gate. Copper kettles stand behind the bar, and the cloudy beer arrives in the house's bulbous hourglass glass. Long wooden tables take walk-ins most nights, and the terrace is flagstoned if you would rather sit outside. Doors stay open to 01:00, and to 03:00 on Friday and Saturday, in the €€ band. Private party rooms are offered on request, worth a call if you are arriving with a dinner-sized crowd.

Bornheimer Strasse, the Macke house and the old cemetery

Museum August Macke Haus (Bornheimer Strasse 96) is the anchor of the quarter and the reason most visitors come north at all. The painter's studio under the roof has been reconstructed, and the Gründerzeit corner townhouse is joined to a pale modern extension whose ground-floor cafe is glazed to the street. Entry is €12 for adults and €6 for ages 7 to 18. On Thursdays after 16:00 everyone pays €5, which is the cheapest way in and also the busiest hour of the week. Guided tours are booked ahead.

The Alter Friedhof Bonn, off Bornheimer Strasse, has been walled since 1715 and is still a working burial ground. Keep voices down. Gravel avenues run under huge plane trees, and Robert and Clara Schumann share a double grave beside Donndorf's 1880 monument, a robed stone figure seated at its side. Ernst Moritz Arndt and Karl Simrock lie here too. Entry is free and unticketed, only the eastern gate is open, and the hours are 07:00 to 20:00 from March to October and 08:00 to 17:00 from November to February. In winter that early closing comes round fast, so put the cemetery before the museum on a short afternoon. The cemetery administration arranges guided tours in German.

Heerstrasse and Breite Strasse in blossom

Cherry Blossom Avenue (Heerstrasse and Breite Strasse) is the most photographed thing in Bonn. Sixty Kanzan cherries line each of the two narrow Altstadt streets, and their funnel crowns close overhead into a solid bright-pink tunnel above pastel 19th-century townhouses, with phones held up beneath. City tree experts put the 2026 bloom at the end of March, with full canopy around Easter, and it holds for barely 10 days. Outside April this is a pretty residential street and nothing more. At peak bloom the city closes both streets to traffic, from 14:00 on Fridays and holidays and from 10:00 at weekends. Walk it early in the morning, before the crowd thickens under the branches.

Café Pawlow (Heerstrasse 64) sits directly under the cherry trees, a scuffed corner café-bar with dark wood, mismatched chairs and gig posters on the walls. Beer is cheap and live music comes round regularly. Sunday is brunch. Tables fill fast on gig nights and through blossom season, so arrive before 20:00 or take a pavement table and watch the street instead. It runs to 02:00 and prices sit at €.

Café Per Tutti (Heerstrasse 61) opened in April 2025 and has become the quarter's daytime meeting point. Pale wood and plants fill the room, there is a glass counter of homemade cakes, and the pavement seats look straight up the blossom street. Sourcing is regional and organic. It takes walk-ins and cards, and stays open to 23:00 on Friday and Saturday. Few Bonn cafés hold hours that late. Weekends are tight, the terrace especially, so come midweek if you want the window seat. Prices sit at €.

Galleries and the culture house on Hochstadenring

Bonner Kunstverein (Hochstadenring) gives its spare white halls to one artist's installation at a time, with polished floors, raw daylight and a publications table by the door. This is the serious international end of the quarter's art scene. Jack O'Brien's 'Yield' runs from 31 October 2026 to 14 February 2027, following Dora Budor in the summer. It opens Tuesday to Sunday, 12:00 to 18:00, at €. The office arranges tours of the current show.

FABRIK45 (Hochstadenring 45) is where Nordstadt's street art comes indoors, a raw ex-industrial hall with spray-painted walls and stacked canvases under bare ceiling ducts and strip lighting. In September 2026 it held Streetart.Bonn's 15th-anniversary show, 'STREET LEGACY 6.0', with 27 artists. The programme runs in blocks. Check it before you walk up, because the hall sits dark between shows. Opening hours are 16:00 to 20:00 from Tuesday to Friday and 11:00 to 18:00 at weekends, at €. The hall is also hired out for private events.

KULT41 (Hochstadenring 41) is run by the Kulturförderverein Nordstadt and books DIY punk, dream-rock and theatre through the year, with Black Water County, Endzeitparty and Keine Faxxen on 2026's bills. Flyers and murals cover the house. The stage is low, the room small and dark, the walls stickered. Pay cash at the counter, at €. The concrete courtyard is where the Macke-Viertel street party happens, and on a quiet night it is where the audience stands between sets.

The Frauenmuseum and St. Marien

The Frauenmuseum Bonn (Im Krausfeld) was the first women's museum in Germany and has spent 45 years running as a working art centre instead of a collection. Behind a plain street block, white-walled floors are hung densely with contemporary work by women artists, with project rooms and studio corners between them. It opens Tuesday to Sunday, 14:00 to 18:00, and at no other hours, so it pairs with a late lunch and never with a morning. Prices sit at €€. Führungen are booked by phone or email.

St. Marien (Adolfstrasse) is the inner Nordstadt's parish landmark, a red-brick neo-Gothic basilica built from 1887 to 1892, with a slender spire and a five-sided choir, wedged tightly between the residential terraces. Inside, the nave is tall and aisled. Entry is free, Tuesday to Sunday, 09:00 to 17:00 from October to March and 09:00 to 19:00 from April to September. Go early in the day, when the aisles are empty. The Pastoralbüro on 0228 633535 arranges access to the nave outside service times.

Dinner on Georgstrasse and Kaiser-Karl-Ring

Lucas Brockhausen runs the quarter's strongest kitchen at Strandhaus (Georgstrasse 28), a small candlelit room on a quiet street, fitted out as a beach house in pale wood and maritime trim. The courses are precisely plated modern European, from €51 per head, at €€€€. Dinner is served Monday to Friday from 18:00 and the restaurant shuts all weekend, which is the single thing visitors here get wrong. Reserve by phone well ahead. The room is small, and a party of six or more has to call rather than click.

Tuscolo am Frankenbad (Kaiser-Karl-Ring 63) faces the listed Frankenbad pool and fills with people who live here. Pizza comes thin and crisp from the wood-fired oven to tightly packed tables, and the pavement terrace sits under the ring-road trees. It opens daily, 11:30 to 23:30, at €€, and tables are booked on 0228 694665. This is the well-priced family dinner in Nordstadt proper, and the one address in this piece you can reach on a Monday.

Where to stay in Nordstadt

Hotel Collegium Leoninum (Noeggerathstrasse 34) occupies an 1890s Catholic seminary, gabled on the outside, vaulted along the corridors, with marble-floored modern rooms and a quiet park next door. Rooms start at €114 a night across 65 of them, at €€€, and the hotel handles meeting and banquet bookings. The position is what recommends it. The Macke house and the blossom streets are both walkable, the Hauptbahnhof is minutes away, and the Beethoven-Haus and the Münster are 10 minutes' walk south in the city centre.

Before you go

Monday closes almost everything in this quarter, and the Macke house stays shut on Tuesday as well, so build the walk between Wednesday and Sunday. Book the Strandhaus table, the Macke house tour and any Führung by phone before you arrive.

See the Bonn guide and the Bonn hotel search.