A royal and imperial center closely associated with Charlemagne and the Carolingian court.
Aachen was the primary palace complex and ritual center of Charlemagne's Frankish empire, and the site of German royal coronations throughout the medieval period. Charlemagne built his palace there from the 790s and died at Aachen in 814.
The Palatine Chapel, consecrated around 805 and still standing, was the finest example of Carolingian architecture in western Europe and became Charlemagne's burial place.
After Charlemagne's reign, Aachen became the traditional site for the coronation of German kings. From the tenth through sixteenth centuries, most German rulers were crowned in Aachen before receiving the imperial crown in Rome.
Charlemagne's canonization in 1165 transformed Aachen into an imperial shrine. Its cathedral treasury accumulated relics through royal patronage, and Aachen's symbolic importance shaped German imperial ideology throughout the medieval period.