Aachen Cathedral

At the heart of Aachen Cathedral is a building Charlemagne commissioned around 796 as the chapel of his palace, consecrated by Pope Leo III in 805. Its architect, Odo of Metz, looked to Byzantine models such as San Vitale in Ravenna: a tall octagon about 14.5 metres across, ringed by a sixteen-sided ambulatory with a gallery above. For more than two hundred years no vault north of the Alps matched its span and height. Ancient columns reused from older buildings stand in the gallery arches — carried off to Paris in 1794 and partly returned — behind bronze railings cast in Aachen around 800 and still in place.

Charlemagne was buried here in 814, and the chapel became the crowning place of German kings: between 936 and 1531 some thirty were anointed at its altar and then enthroned on the marble throne that still stands in the western gallery. After Charlemagne was canonised in 1165, pilgrims arrived in such numbers that in the 14th century the clergy added a Gothic choir, 32 metres high with more than 1,000 square metres of glass, so that locals called it the glass house. It was conceived as a reliquary on the scale of a building, in the manner of the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris.

The furnishings are extraordinary. From the dome hangs the Barbarossa chandelier, a wheel over four metres wide given by Frederick Barbarossa around 1165–1170, its 48 candles lit only on feast days. The golden altar front, the Pala d'Oro, dates from about 1020; the Shrine of Mary (1220–1239) holds the four great Aachen relics, shown to pilgrims only once every seven years, most recently in June 2023; and Charlemagne's own remains lie in the gilded Karlsschrein placed here by Frederick II in 1215. The cathedral treasury next door, with the Cross of Lothair and the bust of Charlemagne, is one of the most important church treasuries in northern Europe.

In 1978 Aachen became one of the first twelve sites anywhere on UNESCO's World Heritage List, and Germany's first. The building survived wartime bombing structurally intact, though the medieval stained glass of the choir was lost.

Getting there

The cathedral is in the centre of Aachen. Aachen Hauptbahnhof is on the high-speed lines to Cologne and to Liège. The nearest airport is Maastricht Aachen (MST) across the Dutch border, about 27 km away; within Germany the nearest is Weeze (NRN), about 92 km away.