Charlemagne’s chapel

Charlemagne builds a palace chapel in Aachen modelled on San Vitale in Ravenna, with marble columns brought from Italy.

The Carolingian Renaissance carried the forms of antiquity and Byzantium north of the Alps and paved the way for the Romanesque.

Charlemagne became king of the Franks in 768 and during his long reign conquered most of western Europe. On Christmas Day 800 he was crowned emperor by the pope in Rome. He wanted to see his realm as a renewal of the Roman Empire, and Aachen, with its hot springs, became his principal residence from the 790s. A palace was built there with a great hall and a chapel connected by a passage. Charlemagne had visited Italy several times and seen the Byzantine churches of Ravenna. He obtained the pope’s permission to take columns and marble from there and from Rome, so that his chapel would literally carry antiquity within it.

The chapel is an octagonal centrally planned building surrounded by a sixteen-sided ambulatory on two levels. One Odo of Metz is named as the architect. On the upper level to the west stands a simple throne of marble slabs facing the altar, from which the ruler could follow the Mass. The west front has a tall tower section, an early example of what was later called a westwork. The bronze railings in the gallery were largely cast on site, which shows that the knowledge of bronze casting survived north of the Alps. The chapel was completed around 800 and was for a long time the largest vaulted building north of the Alps. Charlemagne was buried here when he died in 814.

For centuries afterwards Aachen remained a symbolic centre. Between the 10th and the 16th centuries more than thirty German kings were crowned in the chapel and took their seat on Charlemagne’s throne. In the 14th and 15th centuries a tall Gothic choir with large glass windows, which pilgrims sometimes called the glass house, was built to the east, and the chapel is today part of Aachen Cathedral. Carolingian culture also reached the Nordic countries. It was from the realm of Charlemagne’s son Louis the Pious that the missionary Ansgar was sent to Birka around 830, and it was from the archdiocese of Hamburg-Bremen that the Scandinavian church was long governed. In 1978 Aachen Cathedral became one of the very first World Heritage Sites.