Qibla Direction in Cologne, Germany

How to face the Qibla in Cologne

1. With your phone: tap Open the live Qibla compass, allow location (and, on iPhone, motion access), then turn slowly until the Kaaba on the dial reaches the mark at the top.
2. With a regular compass: hold it flat, turn it until the needle sits on N, then face 123.4° on the dial. That is the magnetic bearing; reading 126.7° off a magnetic compass would leave you about 3.4° off.
3. With the map: open the live compass, switch to Map and follow the gold line from your position to the Kaaba. It does not use the compass at all.

If a phone compass looks wrong, move the phone in a figure-eight a few times, away from laptops, speakers, car dashboards and magnetic cases, and hold it flat while you turn.

Why the Qibla from Cologne points southeast

Cologne is 4,345 km (2,700 miles) from the Kaaba, and measured clockwise from true north the Qibla here is 126.7°, southeast. A straight line on a flat Mercator map would point 139°, southeast. That map stretches distances more the further you are from the equator, so the line that looks straight on it is not the shortest route. The shortest route over the globe is the great circle, and its starting direction from Cologne is the 126.7° bearing; the great-circle bearing is about 12° to the left of the flat-map line. Across the Western European cities on this site the Qibla runs from 116.3° in Marseille to 136.7° in Vienna.

Nearby cities

• Frankfurt, Germany128.1° SE · 153 km away
• Brussels, Belgium123.5° ESE · 183 km away
• Rotterdam, Netherlands124.7° SE · 204 km away
• Amsterdam, Netherlands125.6° SE · 213 km away
• Hamburg, Germany133.0° SE · 356 km away

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