Aachen Cathedral
Aachen Cathedral grew from the Palatine Chapel that Charlemagne built around 800 as the centrepiece of his imperial palace, and it remains the resting place of the emperor himself. The octagonal core, ringed by a sixteen-sided ambulatory and crowned with a dome, was the largest vaulted structure north of the Alps for over two centuries and drew on Byzantine and Roman models to proclaim a revived Western empire.
For some 600 years, from 936 to 1531, thirty German kings were crowned within its walls, seated on the simple marble throne that still stands in the upper gallery. Over the centuries the Carolingian rotunda was wrapped in later additions, most strikingly a soaring Gothic glass choir hall completed in 1414 whose walls of stained glass earned it the nickname the "glass house of Aachen."
The cathedral became Germany's very first UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1978. Its treasury holds some of the most important sacred objects of the medieval world, and every seven years the great Aachen pilgrimage brings crowds to venerate its celebrated relics, continuing a tradition more than a thousand years old.
- Annual visitors
- ≈ 1,300,000
- Location
- 50.7748, 6.0839
- Local time
- 00:34 (Europe/Berlin)
🕘 Visiting hours
| Mon–Thu | 11:00–18:00 |
| Fri–Sat | 11:00–19:00 |
| Sun | 13:00–17:30 |
Individual-visiting windows; no tourist access during services. Entry free; Treasury has separate hours.
✨ Saints & blessed venerated here
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Charlemagne (Karl der Grosse) Blessed
Founder of the Palatine Chapel; buried here 814, relics enshrined in the Karlsschrein (1215).
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Mary, the Blessed Virgin Saint
Principal patroness; her relic is in the Marienschrein, focus of the seven-year pilgrimage.
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John the Baptist Saint
His beheading cloth, one of the four great Aachen relics, kept in the Marienschrein.
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Saint Anne Saint
Has a dedicated chapel (the Annakapelle).
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Saint Matthias Saint
The late-14th-century Matthiaskapelle is dedicated to him.
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Saint Hubert Saint
Co-dedicatee of the Chapel of St. Charles and St. Hubert.
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Saint Nicholas Saint
Co-dedicatee of the 15th-century Chapel of St. Nicholas and St. Michael.
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Saint Michael the Archangel Saint
Co-dedicatee of the Nikolaus- und Michaelskapelle.
Care & donations
Diocese of Aachen / Domkapitel Aachen
Donations and treasury admission support cathedral upkeep
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