is an

autobahn The (; German , ) is the federal controlled-access highway system in Germany. The official term is (abbreviated ''BAB''), which translates as 'federal motorway'. The literal meaning of the word is 'Federal Auto(mobile) Track'. Much of t ...

connecting the cities of

Cologne Cologne ( ; ; ) is the largest city of the States of Germany, German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and the List of cities in Germany by population, fourth-most populous city of Germany with nearly 1.1 million inhabitants in the city pr ...

and

Bonn Bonn () is a federal city in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, located on the banks of the Rhine. With a population exceeding 300,000, it lies about south-southeast of Cologne, in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ruhr region. This ...

. It was constructed between 1929 and 1932, and opened to traffic on 6 August 1932. Because it was the first public road that was limited to motorized vehicles and had no level crossings, it is commonly regarded as the oldest German Autobahn, even though it was only a country road at first and wasn't officially awarded Autobahn status until 1958. Until it was extended to six lanes between 1964 and 1966, there was no central barrier. Except for deceleration at each end, the A 555 did not have a speed limit, resulting in about 15 km of mostly straight three-lane-road on flat terrain, enabling motorists to drive their vehicles at top speed. Especially at night, speeds in excess of 200 km/h were not unusual. In 2004, however, a speed limit was introduced around Wesseling for reasons of noise reduction, effectively cutting the area for legal speeding in half. In

, the A 555 spur has the by-name "Diplomatenrennbahn" (''Diplomat race track''), seemingly because foreign

diplomats A diplomat (from ; romanized ''diploma'') is a person appointed by a state, intergovernmental, or nongovernmental institution to conduct diplomacy with one or more other states or international organizations. The main functions of diplomats a ...

and state visitors liked to take a spin from Bonn to Cologne and back when Bonn still was the seat of government of

West Germany West Germany was the common English name for the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) from its formation on 23 May 1949 until German reunification, its reunification with East Germany on 3 October 1990. It is sometimes known as the Bonn Republi ...

. Bonn locals, however, used that term for the city's central stretch of B 9 due to the large number of diplomatic missions that were clustered in the area and the higher speed limit (70km/h rather than the normal urban 50km/h) limit in that area.

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555 Year 555 ( DLV) was a common year starting on Friday of the Julian calendar. The denomination 555 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europe for naming y ...

A555