Qualla: Aachen Cathedral

Aachen Cathedral: Introduction

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kaap bij Sneeuw, CC0. In the year 1000, Emperor Otto III ordered the floor of his great-great-grandfather's chapel pulled up. He had Charlemagne's vault opened. According to a courtier named Otto of Lomello, who was there, they found the dead emperor seated upright on a throne, crowned, scepter in hand, looking very much as he had on the day they buried him in January 814. The story is almost certainly embellished. The chapel where it happened is not. Aachen Cathedral still stands above that vault, an octagon of marble columns and gold mosaic that for nearly six centuries was the place where thirty-one kings of the Germans came to be made.

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Image: Kaap bij Sneeuw | CC0

Aachen Cathedral: An Emperor Builds a Heaven on Earth

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit a m, CC BY 2.0. Charlemagne began construction sometime between 793 and 796 - a date confirmed by dendrochronology on the original timbers in 2009. His architect, Odo of Metz, modeled the building on the Basilica of San Vitale in Ravenna, the great Byzantine church of the Western Roman remnant. ...

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Image: a m | CC BY 2.0

Aachen Cathedral: The Throne and the Coronations

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown artist, Public domain. Inside the western gallery sits a low marble throne whose plates, recent analysis suggests, were taken as spolia from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Between the coronation of Otto I in 936 and the last Aachen coronation in 1531, thirty-one German kings climbed tho...

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Image: Unknown artist | Public domain

Aachen Cathedral: Glass House for a Saint

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit HOWI - Horsch, Willy (photo), CC BY-SA 3.0. By the 14th century the octagon felt too small for the cult that had grown around the canonized Charlemagne. Between 1355 and 1414 the mayor Gerhard Chorus and the Marienstift built a Gothic choir to the east - twenty-five meters long, thirteen wide, thirty-two high. They called ...

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Image: HOWI - Horsch, Willy (photo) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Aachen Cathedral: Numerology in Bronze

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bronzebildwerk: anonym; Foto: James Steakley, Detail von File:Aachen - Pine cone.jpg, CC BY-SA 3.0. The numbers in the building mean something. Eight, the shape of the central plan, was the medieval symbol for the eighth day - Sunday, resurrection, eternal life. Ten was the number of perfection: the diameter of the octagon, including its outer aisle, measures one hundred Caroli...

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Image: Bronzebildwerk: anonym; Foto: James Steakley, Detail von File:Aachen - Pine cone.jpg | CC BY-SA 3.0

Aachen Cathedral: What the Bombs Spared

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Christian Wehrle, CC BY-SA 3.0. When American troops fought their way into Aachen in October 1944 - the first major German city to fall to the Allies - the cathedral was already badly damaged from years of bombing and artillery. Much of the choir's medieval glass was gone. The cloister was wrecked. The Holiness...

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Image: Christian Wehrle | CC BY-SA 3.0