Four winters ago, I set out to Cologne to see Zumthor’s Kolumba Museum, a place that felt almost mythical. I’d first glimpsed it through the lens of Helene Binet: light slipping through brick perforations, draping the old church ruins like a soft, translucent veil, as if seen through autumn leaves. Her images whispered of light as fluid as water, gentle yet alive.

Yet on my visit, the sky was thick with grey, and rain had shut off the garden. Inside, the sparse exhibits stood quietly, absent of labels, each piece seemingly disconnected from the next. Without any narrative to grasp, I wandered, more a visitor in silence than a spectator.

Reaching the top floor, I found a window framing Cologne Cathedral in the distance. A lone leather chair awaited, and I sank into it, letting the cathedral’s silhouette fill my view. There, through the scaffolding, figures worked, scaling the heights like caretakers of some fading miracle. The cathedral itself had taken centuries—three hundred years of painstaking labour, across generations and empires—to complete. I wondered how many more years it could stand before crumbling like the ruins beneath Kolumba, nearly lost but for a rare mercy in wartime.

By the exit, two refugees sat on the stone steps, draped in thin, orange blankets, cigarettes glowing faintly as twilight crept in. Further along, a mother and father briefly exchanged their child in a wordless handover. I left as the sky deepened, each shadow marking the city’s quiet ache.