Mercure Koeln Airport

In Roman times Colonia Agrippinensis, as Cologne was then called, was the most important glass production centre in the Western Roman Empire. Because they employed the newest glassblowing techniques, the Cologne glass workshops were able to mass-produce all kinds of glass products, making it also available to the lower classes. But glass products from the Eastern Roman Empire, with its elaborate forms and colors, remained very popular with the fashionable upper class. However, instead of just copying the Eastern designs, the workshops in Cologne came up with their own distinct styles and shapes. There was one particular technique in which the workshops had reached perfection and developed their own style in, so called diatret glass. Diatret glass from Cologne would usually comprise a colorless glass cup, set in a cage of brightly colored strands of glass; the cup in the picture being an excellent example. You can see this cup, belonging to a large collection of antique glass artifacts, in the Römisch-Germanisches Museum.