The city of Charlemagne

I was intending to stay the night in Aachen but accommodation is really expensive in the city. The youth hostel is quite a way out of town and given that I wanted to be in Maastricht fairly early on the Saturday that wasn’t going to work. So I decided to just visit for the day and continue on to Maastricht in the late afternoon. A day is enough to see Aachen as all the sights are fairly concentrated in the area around the cathedral. I would have seen a lot more though if it hadn’t poured with rain (and I mean really bucketed) for the entire day. It really put me off going to see anything that was a decent walk away (well actually more than a block) on the off chance that it might be worth looking at. Only definite things when it involves getting wet and really cold.

I arrived about 10 am as I figured this would be when most things open for the day. The cathedral opens earlier as it’s a functioning church still but in the morning there are two services on most days and during them you aren’t allowed in so it’s not really possible to visit the church before 10.45 most days. By the time I’d walked down through the town from the train station, the 10am service had commenced and the doors were firmly shut. I walked around the outside of the church for a bit and took a couple of photos of some of the fountains around the area. Surprisingly they still have water in them at the time of year when most have been drained. Maybe the council in Aachen knows some trick that they aren’t letting on.

I walked to the Schatzkammer of the cathedral which is sort of around the corner in another of the old buildings connected to the main church. This is where you go to look at the treasury and it’s also the meeting point for the tours of the cathedral. Tours cost 3 euros and are well worth the money. Not only are you allowed to take photos (this will cost 2 euros anyway) but you get to go into the choir and see the shrines up close and you get to go up to the second floor and see the throne of Charlemagne. At the moment there is only one tour in English a day and it’s running at 2pm. There is a tour roughly every hour in German between 11 and 3. The tours last about 45 minutes and the guides are usually architecture or art students so know a lot about the building.

Anyway, I decided to go and see the treasury as it was inside and warm. It costs 4 euros to go inside and you get a little booklet (there are about 6 languages to choose from) that guides you through and gives a little history about the people and the items. It’s been written by the guides from the cathedral so they know what they are talking about. The collection is quite impressive as lots of kings came to Aachen over the centuries and they al brought good gifts with them.

The first section is objects related to Charlemagne since he was man who built the first section of the cathedral as his palace church. He was born in 742 and lived to the ripe old age of 72. He was also very tall for his time at nearly 1.9 m. He was both king of the Franks and king of the Western Roman Empire and he nearly doubled his territory in his lifetime (though he had a few more years than most). He made Aachen the capital of his lands and built the palace and the church in the late 8^th century. Unfortunately the rest of the palace is no longer there and the only thing remaining is the octagonal section of the cathedral. He was buried in the middle of the church when he died in the 9^th century and was dug up again in the 12^th century when he was made a saint. His bones were then moved into a shrine which for years was displayed in the middle of the Octagon. It now stands in the choir of the cathedral in a fancy gold box. Sorry about the history lesson about Charlemagne but I figured that some of you might be like me and know absolutely nothing about him.

They have various items that were reputed to have belonged to him (though dating has proved that wrong for several), the original sarcophagus that he was buried in (which he had brought up from Rome, where presumably some other poor soul was tossed out of it) as well as several reliquaries. There is one with his arm bones and another with his head. The bust reliquary was donated in the 14^th century by King Charles IV when he was crowned in the cathedral. The crown on its head is actually the one used in the coronation ceremony. They then have the ubiquitous reliquaries of the true cross and the crown of thorns (which must have been the size of a football field) but these are the real ones, they have the letter from the Pope to say so.

The next room contains the Lothair cross which is named after one of the Frankish kings. It’s stunning and is covered in jewels on one side including two large stones carved into cameos. The other side is simply engraved with Christ on the cross. It was made during the 10^th century and is still used today for important events.

The next section has some of the old altar pieces that are no longer used in the church and various other altar items. There is an interesting antependium (that’s the metal piece that is put on the front of a stone altar as decoration) which depicts all 13 of the apostles (both Judas and his replacement Matthew are shown). They wanted to keep the symmetry of the piece though so Judas and Simon are both in the same panel.

There is very little remaining of the items used in the coronations of kings in the cathedral which continued up until the middle of the 16^th century when they moved to Frankfurt. Most of the insignia are now in the museum in Vienna. They do have the oath that the king would read and an ivory bucket that used to hold holy water though.

Downstairs there is a dark little room that is used to display fabric items from the church. They have a cloak that is named after Leo III but the dates don’t seem to match so I doubt he ever wore it. I suspect it was just one of those stories that got told. There is also an embroidery of the Virgin Mary that is very worn and you can see the drawing that was done on the fabric underneath as a guide for the stitches.

Upstairs are some more items from inside the church including metal work, statues and some more relics.

There is a gorgeous necklace that is worn by the statue of the Virgin in the church that supposedly performs miracles and has a wardrobe of nearly 40 different outfits that are changed depending on the time of the year.

The four major relics of the cathedral are stored in the church in Mary’s Shrine but the three minor ones are in the treasury for most of the year. They are kept in reliquaries that were made in Prague in the 14^th century and they contain the belt of Mary, the belt of Jesus and the rope used to whip Jesus on the way to the crucifixion. They are all wrapped up in fabric though so you can’t really see them.

There is a very interesting reliquary holding the skull of St Anastasius. Normally the skulls are put into busts that are reasonably anatomically correct. His reliquary is actually built to look like a little church and has a square section with doors on it and a dome roof and little portico at one end. It’s actually really quite nice and far less creepy than some of the busts. It was made in Antioch in the 11^th century and they think that it was designed for another purpose.

There is a collection of padlocks that are very ornate and they have all been used to lock the box in the Virgin’s shrine. The items in it are brought out every 7 years (and have been for centuries) and shown to the pilgrims. After the showing, they are put back into the box and a padlock put onto it. The key is then cut into half and split between the church and the city council of Aachen. They then pour molten lead into the lock so that the key is useless anyway. The next time that they want to open the box, they have to cut the lock off and it then joins the collection in the treasury. I guess they didn’t want anyone tampering with the goods. Or probably more likely getting some money by letting people see the relics in between pilgrimages.

The downstairs section of the treasury was really busy with two large school groups from France and a group of Belgian tourists but they really come in a see the main 4 or 5 items downstairs and then go into the cathedral so the other rooms are pretty quiet.

I decided that I was going to have to brave the weather and go and try to see some of the sights of Aachen so I bundled up and headed out into the cold and wet. I made it around the block to the town hall which is a huge gothic style building in the middle of a square and then that was about it. I walked a couple of the streets off the square and then found a bakery to have lunch. It was so nice and warm in the bakery that I even stayed for a second hot drink and some cake. They had really strange hot chocolates in that you were given a cup of hot frothy milk and then a packet of chocolate powder to mix in yourself. It was called Nobis by the way and is just near the cathedral on the railway station side.

It was raining slightly less heavily when I came out of the bakery so I walked around for a bit longer. I wasn’t game to make the longer trips out to see some of the sights so just wandered the streets near the cathedral instead. Then I headed back to the Schatzkammer to get my ticket for the tour.

The cathedral was built in stages but was commenced in the 8^th century by Charlemagne. He built the octagonal section in the middle of the church with its two rings. The inner ring has 8 pillars and the outer has 16. The dome is then built on top. It’s more than 30 metres to the top of the dome so it’s quite large even though the floor area isn’t big. The altar still sits in it’s original place in the outer ring opposite the throne. The golden front plate is from the 11^th century.  It was moved for many years into the choir but has been moved back again. The mosaics covering all the arches are from the 19^th century. The only decorations left from the time of Charlemagne are the bronze railings on the second floor. They are all black now but used to be shiny. They can’t polish them because it will damage them. The columns on the upper section were originally brought to Aachen from temples in Rome. Napoleon stole them and put them into the Louvre in the 19^th century but they have since been returned. Some are copies as they couldn’t bring them all back again. He was big on stealing things from churches, Napoleon.

The octagonal chandelier in the middle of the octagon was donated by Friedrich Barbarossa who was a 12^th century king.

The gothic choir was added in the early 15^th century to commemorate 600 years since the death of Charlemagne who had now become a saint. The pulpit from the 11^th century that had been in the Octagon was moved to the choir then. It’s made of copper because it was easier to work with and then plated with gold. It’s actually really funky and reminds me of those chunky bejeweled bracelets.

The two shrines of the Cathedral are kept in the choir and if you go on the tour you can go right up to them. At the back of the choir is the shrine of Charlemagne. It’s a big and very shiny gold box with various pictures on the sides. There was a bit of a furore about it when it was designed as on one end there is a picture of Charlemagne sitting on a throne with Pope Leo III on one side and Archbishop Turpin on the other and he is nearly twice their size, showing that the kings felt that they were more powerful than even the church.

The other shrine is closer to the front so that it visible behind the altar. It’s the shrine of the Virgin Mary and contains the four major relics: the dress that Mary was wearing when she gave birth to Jesus, Jesus’ loin cloth, Jesus’ swaddling clothes from the Nativity and the shirt that John the Baptist was wearing when he was beheaded. They have been in the church for centuries but there is no record of where they were before that.

The windows in the choir are new since the war. The story goes that the people didn’t like them so they didn’t bother removing them before the bombing started as they wanted an excuse to have new ones. The new ones are made to look like bombs coming down from a night sky and are really lovely though simple. The church actually did quite well during the war as it wasn’t directly hit by bombs and there were no fires inside. People slept in the church every night to keep an eye out for fires and put them out quickly. The Octagon wasn’t damaged at all.

After the choir we headed up the stairs to the throne. It was built by Charlemagne and he used to sit on it but it wasn’t used in a coronation until the 10^th century. It was then used regularly for nearly 600 years. It’s built from recycled marble that is meant to have come from near when Jesus was crucified and is very plain. It sits on four pillars and the gap underneath used to be filled with relics so that they would bless the kings who sat upon them. The stairs up to the throne are a new addition.

I had a very quick look into the side chapels after the tour (only a couple of them are open to the public) and they have modern decorations for the large part. I then had to rush upto the station to catch the train to Aachen as there is only one every hour and I didn’t want to hang around in the rain.

I had a very frustrating trip to the station as the first ticket machine wouldn’t accept cash and the second was happy to take my money but not to give me a ticket. I went to the service desk but all they could give me was a form to fill out to try and get a refund but you have to get the money put into a bank account. I’m tempted to do it anyway because it will cost them almost as much to do an international transfer as I lost into the machine. I then had to pay for the ticket again and I nearly missed my train in the end. Not Happy Jan.

But I made it to Maastricht in the end so read on to hear about my first experience of the Netherlands.