The stones of Aachen

UNESCO Courier, Nov, 1991 by Herta Lepie, Roland Wentzler

AACHEN cathedral, which incorporates the Palatine Chapel of Charlemagne, is the most beautiful surviving example of Carolingian architecture. On 31 March 1978 it became the first German monument to be inscribed on UNESCO's World Heritage List.

A living monument

Situated at the westernmost tip of Germany, close to the frontiers of The Netherlands and Belgium, Aachen once symbolized the political and cultural unity of the Carolingian empire. Today it is the European city par excellence. Its principal attraction is the Palatine Chapel, a remarkable monument rich in art and history, which attracts more than a million visitors each year. Besides its historical and cultural interest, Aachen cathedral is also a place of pilgrimage, just as it was in the Middle Ages, when it vied in importance with Rome and Santiago de Compostela. Besides a venerated image, Our Lady of Aachen, the cathedral houses Charlemagne's tomb and, among other sacred objects, a reliquary containing four particularly remarkable pieces of material: the robe of the Virgin Mary, the swaddling clothes of the Infant Jesus, the garment that girded the loins of Christ on the Cross, and the cloth used at the beheading of St. John the Baptist.

These great biblical relics have been solemnly displayed every even years since 1349, and it is expected that in June 1992 countless pilgrims will again gather at Aachen to join fervently in the procession held in their honour.

The Palatine Chapel

The region of Aachen, in the central part of the Frankish kingdom, was rich in game and possessed hot springs whose beneficial properties were already known to the Romans. It was in fact on the ruins of the ancient Roman baths that Charlemagne built his palace, a building whose function was political, economic and religious as well as residential. Not much survives to recall its political role, originally embodied in the Throne Room, except the foundations of the tower known as the Granusturm, whose stones were used to build the city's Gothic town hall. The residential quarters and storehouses have disappeared without trace. But the church that Charlemagne dedicated to the Virgin and chose as his final resting-place has stood the test of the centuries.

The building was probably completed around the year 800. Two years previously, the theologian Alcuin had announced in a letter to the Emperor that the columns of the chapel were being built. Originally, the Palatine Chapel consisted of three elements: the central building, with a rectangular choir to the east and an entrance porch to the west. The peripheral chapels and the Gothic choir with its stained-glass windows are later additions.

Built on an east-west axis, the church followed the plan of early Christian basilicas, an atrium surrounded by colonnades. Traces of it can still be seen in the parvis.

The way into the building is through a combined porch and belltower, flanked by two towers with staircases in them. The effect is one of fortress-like bulk. The two brass doors of the main portal were cast in Aachen in Charlemagne's time. Four other doors and eight grilles from the same workshop are decorated with motifs recalling Roman Antiquity. There are two artefacts from Roman times in the narthex: a brass she-wolf and a bronze pine cone that may once have decorated a fountain in the atrium.

The chapel itself is clearly modelled on the architecture of Ravenna and of Byzantine basilicas. It consists of a two-storey-high octagonal rotunda encircled by a sixteen-sided ambulatory. Heavy polygonal pillars support the eight arcades of the upper storey, which are flanked by bronze grilles from the Carolingian period. Within the arcades are the famous marble columns brought by Charlemagne from Rome and Ravenna to stress the continuity of his project with the architecture of the Roman empire.

This imposing edifice is topped by a dome of a type which had never previously been constructed north of the Alps. To support the weight of so large a structure, Charlemagne's architect divided the calotte of the vault into eight sections, allowing him to distribute the weight equitably across eight pillars. A ring of metal dating from Carolingian times helps to support the base of the dome. The roof is decorated with a mosaic representing the twenty-four elders of the Apocalypse. The height of the building (32 metres) exactly corresponds to the diameter of the church's outside wall, so the building would fit perfectly into a cube, thereby respecting the proportions attributed in the Bible to the Tower of Babel and the Heavenly Jerusalem.

The high altar, the oldest in Germany, is situated in the western part of the aisle, on the site of an earlier altar. Its marble had already been used previously. On it were crowned twenty-five of the thirty German emperors, from Otto the Great in 936 to Ferdinand I in 1531.

The altar is decorated with seventeen golden bas-reliefs dating from the early eleventh century, which were probably commissioned by Otto III and completed in the reign of his successor, Henry II. Christ the Redeemer is shown in the centre, flanked by the Virgin Mary and the Archangel Michael, both intercessors for the human race. Four medallions representing the symbols of the Evangelists surmount scenes from Christ's passion.