Aachen Cathedral

Timeline

1. 786

   Palace Chapel Begun

   Charlemagne commissions Odo of Metz to begin the palatine chapel of his Aachen residence, the future cathedral's octagonal core.

2. 805

   Consecration

   Pope Leo III consecrates the completed Palatine Chapel, marking the birth of the oldest large-scale dome in northern Europe.

3. 814

   Charlemagne's Burial

   On 28 January Charlemagne dies and is buried in the chapel, reportedly seated on his marble throne in imperial regalia.

4. 881

   Viking Raid

   A Viking attack inflicts heavy damage on the chapel, and the structure is left in disrepair until restoration in 983.

5. 936

   Coronations Begin

   Otto I's German coronation at Aachen opens a 600-year tradition that gives the cathedral its name as the Kaiserdom.

6. 1165

   Charlemagne Canonised

   Antipope Paschal III canonises Charlemagne, elevating Aachen to one of the principal pilgrimage destinations of the West.

7. 1215

   Karlsschrein Completed

   At Frederick II's German coronation, Charlemagne's relics are translated into the gilt Karlsschrein casket.

8. 1355

   Gothic Choir Begun

   Construction of the Gothic choir hall begins to handle pilgrim traffic, with consecration of the Capella vitrea in 1414.

9. 1531

   Last Coronation

   Ferdinand I's coronation closes the 600-year cycle of German royal coronations at Aachen Cathedral.

10. 1944-1945

    WWII Damage

    Allied bombing and the ground battle for Aachen severely damage the cathedral, but its core structure miraculously survives.

11. 1978

    World Heritage Inscription

    Aachen Cathedral enters the UNESCO World Heritage List as one of the first twelve sites — Germany's first listing.

Detailed History

Aachen Cathedral's history opens in 786 (some sources 796), when the Frankish king Charlemagne (reigned 768-814) began a palatine chapel as part of the Aachen palace complex. The architect, traditionally identified as Odo of Metz, modelled the building on the Basilica of San Vitale in Ravenna and the Little Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, producing an octagonal domed core unmatched in scale north of the Alps. A letter from Alcuin in 798 places the work near completion, and in 805 Pope Leo III consecrated the finished chapel. Bronze doors, railings and figural sculptures were cast in a foundry set up nearby. In January 814 Charlemagne died at age 71 and was interred in the chapel, reportedly seated on his marble throne with the imperial robe, crown, and an open Gospel. A Viking raid in 881 inflicted heavy damage, repaired in 983. After Charlemagne's canonisation by the antipope Paschal III in 1165 the chapel became a major pilgrimage site; from 1355 a Gothic choir hall was added and consecrated as the Capella vitrea on the 600th anniversary of Charlemagne's death (1414). Otto III opened Charlemagne's grave around the year 1000; Frederick I Barbarossa reburied him in a marble sarcophagus in 1165; and at Frederick II's German coronation in 1215 the bones were translated again, into the gilt Karlsschrein. Otto I's coronation in 936 began an unbroken tradition: thirty German kings received their crown at Aachen down to Ferdinand I in 1531, earning the building its byname Kaiserdom. The diocese was abolished in 1801 but restored in 1930. During the Second World War, Allied bombing and the bitter ground combat for Aachen damaged the building heavily; many treasures had been moved to safe storage in advance and the basic structure survived, but the 14th-century glass, the Gothic Revival altar, much of the cloister and the Holiness Chapel were lost. Reconstruction stretched over more than thirty years and cost an estimated forty million euros. In 1978 Aachen Cathedral was one of the first twelve sites to enter the UNESCO World Heritage List — Germany's first World Heritage site and one of Europe's first.

Cultural Significance

Aachen Cathedral fuses classical, Byzantine and Carolingian traditions in the oldest large-scale dome of northern Europe, and as the site of thirty German royal coronations between 936 and 1531 it stands as the spiritual origin of European political unity. Its 1978 World Heritage inscription joined the Galápagos Islands, Yellowstone and ten other sites in the inaugural twelve — the very first list — making this Germany's first UNESCO listing and one of Europe's first three cultural sites. The committee cited criteria (i), (ii), (iv) and (vi): a 'masterpiece of human creative genius' for the chapel's columns of Greek and Italian marble, bronze doors, and once-vast dome mosaics; the first vaulted construction undertaken north of the Alps since antiquity; an exemplary surviving model of the central-plan tribune-equipped 'Aula Chapel'; and a foundational symbol of West-European reintegration under Charlemagne's protection. The cathedral treasury holds Carolingian, Ottonian and Hohenstaufen masterpieces — the Lothair Cross, the bust of Charlemagne, the Persephone sarcophagus — and ranks among the foremost ecclesiastical collections in northern Europe.

Architectural Details

The Palatine Chapel at the heart of the cathedral was raised between 786 and 805, an octagonal core with a 14.46-meter inner span surrounded by a sixteen-sided outer wall on two storeys. The inner octagonal vault is carried on heavy piers, encircled below by low groin-vaulted aisles and above by the high gallery known as the Hochmünster, with the imperial throne and high altar in an octagonal side chamber under a tilted barrel vault. The drum carries an octagonal cupola with windows; ancient marble columns from Greece and Italy, cast bronze doors and railings, and the now-vanished mosaic of the dome (one of the largest of its day) connect the building to the classical tradition. From the late fourteenth century a Gothic choir hall — the Capella vitrea — extended the chapel to the east, its stained-glass walls rising about 25 meters in a multi-sided apse. Successive Ottonian-Revival, Romanesque-Revival and Gothic-Revival campaigns of the nineteenth century overlay all of this, so that the cathedral as it stands today reads as a layered chronicle of European architectural history across four eras.