Imperial Palace of Goslar

Start with your feet. The square in front of the palace slopes gently upward, and the ground is broad and open. After the narrow lanes of the old town, the space feels almost exposed. Ahead of you, a long stone hall rises from a grassy rise. Its rows of round-arched windows catch the light. On a clear day, the wooded hills of the Harz stand behind it, dark green against the sky.

If you have come over from Bad Harzburg, you have made a short journey west. This building stands in neighbouring Goslar, an old mining town at the northern edge of the Harz mountains. Locals know it as the Kaiserpfalz. The word means an imperial palace. But it was never a palace in the modern sense. It was a working seat of power, a place where a travelling ruler could stop, hold court, and govern.

That idea of a travelling ruler matters here. Medieval German kings had no single fixed capital. They moved with their courts from one royal residence to the next. They collected food, loyalty, and taxes as they went. A palace like this one was a stage on that route. Goslar became one of the most favoured stops of all. Emperors came back here again and again across the eleventh century.

Why Goslar? The answer lies in the hills just south of the town. A mountain called the Rammelsberg held rich deposits of silver, copper, and lead. Mining there goes back more than a thousand years. Silver meant coins, and coins meant power. A ruler who controlled this wealth kept it close. Today the Rammelsberg mines and the old town of Goslar are listed together as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The palace grew in stages. Building began in the early eleventh century under Emperor Henry the Second. It reached its greatest scale under Henry the Third, around the middle of that century. He seems to have loved this place more than almost any other. The long hall in front of you, called the Kaiserhaus, or Emperor's House, is counted among the largest secular buildings of its age in Germany. Secular simply means built for government and daily life, not for worship.

Here is a detail many visitors miss. Henry the Third's son, the future Henry the Fourth, was born here in Goslar in 1050. That child grew up to become one of the most troubled rulers of the Middle Ages. His long struggle with the papacy over who could appoint bishops shook all of Europe. Historians call it the Investiture Controversy. Part of that story began in the rooms on this hill.

Now look closely at the building itself. The style is Romanesque. That is the heavy, round-arched way of building that came before the pointed arches of the Gothic era. The walls are thick. The windows are grouped in pairs and threes, divided by slim columns. It looks very complete. And that is the second surprise... much of what you see is the work of the nineteenth century.

By the early eighteen hundreds, the palace had fallen into a poor state. Parts were used for storage. Some stood close to ruin. Then, after German unification in 1871, the new empire looked for symbols of a glorious medieval past. This hall was a perfect candidate. It was rebuilt and restored on a grand scale. So the building carries two stories at once. One is the medieval court. The other is a modern nation telling a story about itself.

Inside, that second story becomes impossible to ignore. The great upper hall, the Reichssaal, is covered in huge painted murals. They were made by the painter Hermann Wislicenus in the late nineteenth century. They show scenes from German history and legend, full of emperors, armour, and drama. They are less a record of the past than a portrait of how Germans of that era wished to see it. Take a moment to read them with that in mind.

Outside, the same mood continues. Two large bronze equestrian statues stand in front of the hall. One shows Frederick Barbarossa, the twelfth-century emperor whose red beard gave him his nickname. The other shows Wilhelm the First, the first emperor of the newly united Germany. Placing them side by side was deliberate. It linked the medieval empire to the modern one. Notice the bronze lions nearby too, a symbol borrowed from the region's history.

Attached to the southern end of the palace is a small chapel dedicated to Saint Ulrich. It is a double chapel, built on two levels, one above the other. In such chapels, the ruler and his household could worship on the upper floor, apart from servants below. Inside lies a quiet and moving object. The heart of Henry the Third was brought back to Goslar after his death in 1056. A tomb inside the chapel holds it.

Think about what that choice says. The emperor's body was buried elsewhere, in the cathedral at Speyer. But his heart came home to the place he loved. Below the palace, there once stood a great church linked to it, dedicated to Saint Simon and Saint Jude. It was demolished in the early nineteenth century. Only its entrance porch survives today, down the slope. It is worth a short walk to see it.

Before you go, step back toward the bottom of the square. Turn and look at the whole length of the hall again. Notice how the slope lifts it above the town, so that everyone below had to look up. Listen to the sounds around you now... footsteps on stone, a bell somewhere in the old town, perhaps wind coming down from the Harz. Emperors once arrived on this same rise, with horses, banners, and silver from the hills behind them. The hall is still here. And now, for a moment, so are you.