Aachen - Cathedral

The "Imperial Cathedral" was known as the "Royal Church of St. Mary at Aachen" during the Middle Ages. From 936 to 1531, the Aachen chapel was the church of coronation for 30 German kings and 12 queens.

In 792 Charlemagne ("Charles the Great", "Karl der Grosse") began the construction of a palace here and part of the whole structure was the "Palatine Chapel". It is known, that the buildings were planned by the architect Odo of Metz. Pope Leo III consecrated the chappel in 805.

The center of the chapel is the octogon, that had a romanesque choir or apse to the east. When more and more pilgrims headed to Aachen, this building was demolished and the gothic choir was built. It was completed 1414. The choir is 25 meters long, 13 meters wide - and 32 meters high. It has about 1000 m² in stained windows and was influenced by the "Sainte-Chapelle" in Paris.

The cathedral in Aachen hold relics since Charlemagne´s time, and so pilgrims walked to to Aachen. Since the canonization of Charlemagne in 1165 Aachen got more attractive and pilgrimage grew, when the content of a shrine, that was in the cathedral since hundreds of years, got known in 1239. There was a nappy of Jesus, a waistcloth of Jesus, a gown of St. Mary and the cloth in which the head of John Baptist had been wrapped in.
These relics started a pilgrimage, named "Aachener Heiligtumsfahrt" - and to "manage" the masses, this choir had to be built, a shrine by itself. The "Aachener Heiligtumsfahrt" took place in a rythm of seven years - and it still does. The last took place 2007, the next will take place 2014.

Here is the website about the pilgrimage in German, there are photos of the relics as well.

www.heiligtumsfahrt2007.de/index47-0.aspx

The cathedral has a very nice website - in German:
www.aachendom.de/

Wikipedia has one
in English: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aachen_Cathedral
and French: fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cath%C3%A9drale_d%27Aix-la-Chapelle