Palace of Aachen

Stand in the open square between the cathedral and the town hall, and listen for a moment. Footsteps on worn paving. Pigeons settling on stone ledges. Perhaps the low murmur of water somewhere beneath the city, because Aachen sits on warm springs. This wide, quiet space has a name, the Katschhof. More than twelve centuries ago, it formed the heart of one of the most important royal residences in Europe. You are standing inside Charlemagne's palace.

Charlemagne was king of the Franks, a Germanic people who ruled much of western Europe after the fall of Rome. By the end of the eighth century, his realm stretched from the North Sea to northern Italy. Like earlier rulers, he travelled constantly between estates. But in his later years, he chose Aachen more and more. Here he built a permanent seat, a place where an empire could be governed from one fixed point.

Why here? The answer is under your feet. Aachen has hot mineral springs, and the Romans had already built baths around them. Charlemagne's biographer Einhard wrote that the king loved to swim. He describes Charlemagne bathing in the warm waters with his sons, his nobles and his guards... sometimes a hundred people at once. It is a surprisingly human picture of a man we usually see on thrones and coins.

The palace was not one single building. Think of it as a complex. At the northern end stood the great hall, the aula regia, where the king received envoys and held assemblies. At the southern end stood the chapel. A long covered passage connected the two, so the ruler could move between power and prayer without stepping into the rain. Between them lay courtyards, living quarters and workshops, all spread across the ground where you now stand.

Turn towards the cathedral. Its oldest part — the eight-sided core, the octagon — is the original Palatine Chapel, the palace church. It was built around the turn of the ninth century. A later source names its master builder as Odo of Metz, though we know very little about him. What survives is remarkable. Few buildings north of the Alps from this period still stand, still roofed, still in daily use.

The chapel's shape was a deliberate statement. An octagon with a domed centre recalled the great churches of the eastern Roman Empire, and especially the church of San Vitale in Ravenna, in Italy. Charlemagne wanted his capital to look like the heir of Rome. He even brought columns and marble from Rome and Ravenna, carried across the Alps. Some of those ancient columns still stand in the upper gallery of the octagon today.

Here is a detail many visitors miss. In that upper gallery stands a stone throne, made of plain marble slabs. It is strikingly simple for a seat of such importance. For roughly six centuries, from the tenth to the sixteenth century, around thirty German kings were crowned in this church and then sat on that throne. Look closely if you join a guided tour. On one slab, scratches show the outline of an old board game, a hint that the stone had an earlier life.

Charlemagne died in Aachen in 814 and was buried in his chapel. His remains were later placed in a golden shrine that is still kept in the cathedral. Over the centuries, the church grew around the octagon. A tall Gothic choir with enormous windows was added in the later Middle Ages. From outside, you can see the joins between eras — the heavy, dark Carolingian core and the lighter, soaring Gothic glass beside it.

Now turn around and face the town hall. It looks like a late medieval civic building, and mostly it is. In the fourteenth century, the citizens of Aachen built their town hall on top of the ruins of Charlemagne's great hall. They reused its foundations and parts of its walls. So the seat of local government literally rests on the seat of imperial government. The idea of power in this city has stayed in the same place.

Look at the town hall's eastern tower, known as the Granus Tower. Its lower stonework is generally believed to date from Charlemagne's time. It is one of the clearest pieces of the original palace you can still see above ground. Notice how the rougher masonry differs from the neater, later walls around it. The tower carries the name of Granus, a Celtic god of healing springs. It is another link back to the warm water that drew rulers here.

It is worth walking slowly along the edge of the square. Archaeologists have traced the outline of the old palace buildings, and some of their lines are marked in the paving and in the surrounding streets. The scale becomes clear as you walk. The distance from the chapel to the great hall is short enough to cross in a few minutes. Yet within this space, laws were issued, scholars gathered, and ambassadors arrived from distant courts.

That word, scholars, matters. Charlemagne gathered learned men at his court from across Europe, including the English scholar Alcuin of York. Together they copied ancient texts, improved handwriting and reformed schooling. Historians often call this period the Carolingian Renaissance. Many classical Latin works survive today only because monks of this era copied them. Some of that effort was organised from this very palace, which makes this quiet square a quiet turning point in European learning.

In 1978, Aachen Cathedral became one of the first sites in the world added to the UNESCO World Heritage list, and the first in Germany. That recognition was really for the old palace church at its heart. Today the cathedral is still a working church. Services, choirs and the ringing of bells continue the life of a building that has never fully stopped being used since Charlemagne's day.

Before you move on, pause in the middle of the Katschhof one more time. Look south to the dark dome of the octagon, and north to the tower of the town hall. Picture the covered passage between them, and a king walking through it. Then notice what is here now — café chairs, cyclists, children chasing pigeons. As you leave, listen again for the footsteps on the stones. People have crossed this same ground for more than twelve hundred years.