Aachen - the City of Charlemagne

This morning I headed over the border to visit Aachen, a small German city notable for being the heart of Charlemagne's Carolingian empire.

It's a quaint, old city with classic European cobbled streets, attractive squares and lots of fountains, statues & churches. It's dominated by an impressive cathedral where Charlemagne's sarcophagus is on display to this day.

Like most, I'd heard of Charlemagne but didn't know much about him so I made an effort before I visited to listen to a few podcasts about his life. He was a relatively self-made man for the ninth century, born hundreds of years after the fall of the Western Roman Empire but centuries before the emergence of Medieval Europe, he's undoubtedly the most notable European historical figure of this period.

From his heartlands in this area of northern Rhineland, he conquered hundreds of miles of territory stretching across modern day France and Germany and even beyond the Alps down to Rome. No-one had controlled that large a territory in Western Europe for centuries earlier and no-one would again for hundreds of years.

He spread Christianity across pagan peoples in Northern Europe and really created the playbook for how Medieval Kings and particularly Holy Roman Emperors would behave, the quintessential European ruler.Read more