Palatine Chapel of Aachen (c. 796-805): Charlemagne's Church

The Palatine Chapel of Aachen is the church Charlemagne built at the heart of his favourite palace, roughly between 796 and 805. Its tall octagon, ringed by arches and marble columns, was the most ambitious building north of the Alps in its day. Charlemagne was buried there in 814, and for six centuries German kings were crowned in it. Today it forms the core of Aachen Cathedral, Germany’s first UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Background: a palace at Aachen

Aachen, in the far west of modern Germany, had been a Roman spa because of its hot springs. Charlemagne began spending winters there in the 790s and turned it into his main residence for the rest of his reign. Around the springs he built a palace complex with a large audience hall, residential buildings, baths and a church, linked by a long covered gallery.

The project was part of a wider programme of renewal often called the Carolingian Renaissance. Charlemagne wanted a capital that could stand comparison with Rome, Ravenna and Constantinople. The church, dedicated to the Virgin Mary, was its spiritual centre.

Design and models

The core of the building is an octagon, a central space with eight sides, surrounded by a sixteen-sided outer wall. Between them runs a two-storey ambulatory, a walkway around the centre. On the upper level, a gallery opens onto the octagon through tall arches filled with columns. The octagon is crowned by a dome, originally decorated with a mosaic of Christ surrounded by the twenty-four elders of the Book of Revelation.

The closest model is the church of San Vitale in Ravenna, completed in the 540s under the Byzantine emperor Justinian, which Charlemagne had seen. Scholars also point to other centrally planned churches and palace chapels of the late Roman and Byzantine world. The builders did not simply copy, however: the Aachen octagon is more massive and severe, with heavy piers and a strong vertical emphasis.

At the west end stood a monumental entrance block, or westwork, facing an atrium. It gave the building a commanding façade and provided a high space where the ruler could appear. The architect is traditionally named as Odo of Metz, known only from a lost inscription recorded later. Little else is known about him.

Materials from Rome and Ravenna

Charlemagne’s biographer Einhard explains that the king could not find suitable columns and marble elsewhere, so he had them brought from Rome and Ravenna. A letter of Pope Hadrian I gave permission to take mosaics and marble from the palace at Ravenna. These reused pieces, known as spolia, linked the new church to the Christian Roman Empire.

Einhard also praises the bronze doors and railings. Remarkably, many of the original bronze doors and the gallery railings survive, and evidence of a foundry for casting them has been found nearby. They are among the finest bronze works of the early Middle Ages.

On the upper gallery stands a plain throne made of marble slabs, probably reused Roman material. It is traditionally called Charlemagne’s throne, though its precise date is debated. Its position faced the altar and allowed the ruler to follow the liturgy from above.

Consecration and Charlemagne’s burial

Later tradition holds that Pope Leo III consecrated the church in 805. That is consistent with what is known of the building’s progress, but the date is not recorded in contemporary sources. Five years earlier the same pope had crowned Charlemagne emperor in Rome, an event described in Coronation of Charlemagne.

Charlemagne died at Aachen on 28 January 814. Einhard reports that he was buried in the chapel on the same day. The exact place of his first tomb is not known. In the year 1000 Emperor Otto III had the tomb opened, an event surrounded by later legends.

In 1165 Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa had Charlemagne canonised, with the approval of the antipope Paschal III. He also gave the great wheel-shaped chandelier that still hangs in the octagon. In 1215 Frederick II placed Charlemagne’s bones in a magnificent gilded shrine, the Karlsschrein, which remains in the cathedral.

Coronation church of German kings

Aachen’s link with Charlemagne made it the natural place to crown kings who saw themselves as his heirs. In 936 Otto I was crowned there, sitting on the stone throne after the ceremony, a step towards his imperial coronation described in Otto I Crowned Emperor. Between 936 and 1531 about thirty German kings were crowned in Aachen, the last being Ferdinand I.

The church grew with its importance. A Gothic choir, known as the glass house because of its huge windows, was added and consecrated in 1414. Chapels were built around the octagon, and the dome mosaic was replaced in the 19th century by a modern reconstruction.

Legacy

The Palatine Chapel influenced church building for centuries. Its octagonal plan was imitated in churches such as Ottmarsheim in Alsace and Nijmegen’s Valkhof chapel, and it shaped the idea of a palace church throughout the medieval Empire. In 1978 Aachen Cathedral became one of the first twelve sites on the UNESCO World Heritage List and the first in Germany.

Key people

Charlemagne (c. 747-814), king of the Franks from 768 and emperor from 800, commissioned the chapel as the centre of his palace and chose it as his burial place. Einhard says he attended services there morning and evening whenever his health allowed.

Einhard (c. 775-840) was a scholar at Charlemagne’s court who later wrote his biography. He is sometimes linked with the building works at Aachen, and his account of the columns brought from Rome and Ravenna is a key source for the chapel’s history.

Odo of Metz is the name traditionally given to the architect. Nothing is known of his life beyond this, and some scholars treat the attribution with caution.

Pope Leo III, who crowned Charlemagne emperor in 800, visited Francia again in 804-805 and is traditionally credited with consecrating the chapel.

Otto III and the legends of the tomb

In the year 1000 the young emperor Otto III, who admired Charlemagne deeply, had the tomb opened. Later chroniclers told dramatic stories about what he found, including the claim that Charlemagne was seated upright on a throne with a crown on his head. These accounts were written decades later and are not reliable, but they show how powerful Charlemagne’s memory had become. Otto III himself was buried in the chapel in 1002.

Timeline

• c. 796: Building work on Charlemagne’s palace church at Aachen is under way.
• 805: Traditional date of the consecration by Pope Leo III.
• 814, 28 January: Charlemagne dies at Aachen and is buried in the chapel.
• 936: Otto I is crowned king of the East Franks at Aachen.
• 1000: Otto III opens Charlemagne’s tomb.
• 1165: Charlemagne is canonised under Frederick Barbarossa.
• 1215: Frederick II places Charlemagne’s remains in the Karlsschrein.
• 1414: The Gothic choir is consecrated.
• 1531: Ferdinand I is the last king crowned at Aachen.
• 1978: Aachen Cathedral is inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

Why it matters

The Palatine Chapel is the best-preserved major building of the Carolingian age and a physical expression of Charlemagne’s claim to revive Roman and Christian empire in the West. As his tomb and the coronation church of German kings, it tied later rulers to his memory for centuries. It remains one of the clearest links between late antiquity and medieval Europe in stone.