Damaged buildings included the medieval churches of St. Foillan, St. Paul and St. Nicholas, and the Rathaus ( city hall ), although Aachen Cathedral was largely unscathed.

Aachen Cathedral has been designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Aachen Cathedral

For 600 years, from 936 to 1531, Aachen Cathedral was the church of coronation for 30 German kings and 12 queens.

The bronze doors on the Aachen Cathedral in Germany date back to about 800 A. D.

However, the decapitation cloth of St. John is kept at the Aachen Cathedral.

* Otto III, Holy Roman Emperor has Charlemagne's vault opened ( see Aachen Cathedral ).

Submitting to a new election but securing the support of several influential princes by making extensive promises, he was chosen at the Imperial City of Frankfurt on 27 July 1298, and crowned at Aachen Cathedral on 24 August.

Both proceeded to the grave of Charlemagne at Aachen Cathedral, where Bolesław received the Charlemagne's throne as a gift.

He was buried in Aachen Cathedral alongside the body of Charlemagne.

Otto II was later crowned by his uncle Bruno the Great, Archbishop of Cologne, at Aachen Cathedral on May 26, 961.

Rudolph was crowned in Aachen Cathedral on 24 October 1273.

* Shrine of St. Mary, in Aachen Cathedral.

This church, frequently referred to as the " Imperial Cathedral " ( in German: Kaiserdom ), is a Roman Catholic church in Aachen, Germany.

When the Duke and Duchess appeared there, both wore magnificent crowns: Margaret's crown ( made in about 1461 ) was adorned with pearls, and with enamelled white roses for the House of York set between red, green and white enamelled letters of her name, with gold Cs and Ms, entwined with lovers ' knots ( it can still be seen in the treasury at Aachen Cathedral ).

Aachen Cathedral, frequently referred to as the " Imperial Cathedral " ( in German: Kaiserdom ), is a Roman Catholic church in Aachen, Germany.

The Cathedral Treasury in Aachen is regarded as one of the most important ecclesiastical treasuries in northern Europe.

image: Aachen Cathedral Octagon1. jpg | Mosaics

image: Aachen Cathedral Octagon2. jpg | Mosaics

* Aachen Cathedral Guide

* Aachen Cathedral website ( in German )

He was of noble Frankish parentage, and educated at the palace school in Aquae Grani ( Aachen ) under Alcuin.

Aachen was a favoured residence of Charlemagne, and later the place of coronation of the Kings of Germany.

In 2009, Aachen was ranked 8th among cities in Germany for innovation.

A quarry on the Lousberg, which was first used in Neolithic times, attests to the long occupation of the site of Aachen.

Even in the late 18th century the Abbess of Burtscheid was prevented from building a road linking her territory to the neighbouring estates of the duke of Jülich ; the city of Aachen even deployed its handful of soldiers to chase away the road-diggers.

Aachen became attractive as a spa by the middle of the 17th century, not so much because of the effects of the hot springs on the health of its visitors but because Aachen was then — and remained well into the 19th century — a place of high-level prostitution in Europe.

Traces of this hidden agenda of the city's history is found in the 18th century guidebooks to Aachen as well as to the other spas ; the main indication for visiting patients, ironically, was syphilis ; only by the end of the 19th century had rheuma become the most important object of cures at Aachen and Burtscheid.

Aachen was chosen as the site of several important congresses and peace treaties: the first congress of Aachen ( often referred to as Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle in English ) in 1668, leading to the First Treaty of Aachen in the same year which ended the War of Devolution.

By the middle of the 19th century, industrialisation swept away most of the city's medieval rules of production and commerce, although the entirely corrupt remains of the city's mediæval constitution was kept in place ( compare the famous remarks of Georg Forster in his Ansichten vom Niederrhein ) until 1801, when Aachen became the " chef-lieu du département de la Roer " in Napoléon's First French Empire.

In 1880, the Aachen tramway network was opened, and in 1895 it was electrified.

Aachen was heavily damaged during World War II.

Aachen was the first German city to be captured by the Allies.

Aachen was the administrative centre for the coal-mining industries in neighbouring places to the northeast ; it never played any role in brown coal mining, however, neither in administrative or industrial terms.

The International Charlemagne Prize of Aachen was awarded in the year 2000 to the President of the United States, Bill Clinton, for his special personal contribution to cooperation with the states of Europe, for the preservation of peace, freedom, democracy and human rights in Europe, and for his support of the enlargement of the European Union.

The Scotch-Club in Aachen was the first discothèque since 19 October 1959.

King Ethelwulf of Wessex, father of Alfred the Great was born in Aachen.

He went on to remain there in a mansion which he may have extended, although there is no source attesting to any significant building activity at Aachen in his time, apart from the building of the Palatine Chapel in Aachen ( since 1929, cathedral ) and the palatial presentation halls.

As a spa city, Aachen could use the title Bad Aachen, but as the town then would not appear in first place on alphabetically ordered lists, it declined to do so.

In 1372, Aachen became the first coin-minting city in the world to regularly place an Anno Domini date on a general circulation coin, a groschen.

RWTH Aachen University, established as Polytechnicum in 1870, is one of the Germany's Universities of Excellence with strong emphasis on technological research, especially for electrical and mechanical engineering, computer sciences, physics, and chemistry.

Seeking help from a physicist, on March 14, 1888, he wrote to Otto Lehmann, at that time a < i lang =" de "> Privatdozent </ i > in Aachen.

* 1944 – World War II: The Battle of Crucifix Hill occurs on Crucifix Hill just outside Aachen.

Otto took control of Aachen, the place of coronation, and was crowned by Adolf, Archbishop of Cologne, on July 12, 1198.

* Charlemagne dies in Aachen, aged 67 or 72 ( depending on source )

Charles, having made good use of the difficulties of his opponents, was again elected in Frankfurt on 17 June 1349 and re-crowned at Aachen on 25 July 1349.

At Otto III's funeral on Easter, 1002, in Aachen, the German nobles repeated their opposition to Henry IV.

Elected King of the Romans 16 February 1486 in Frankfurt-am-Main at his father's initiative and crowned on 9 April 1486 in Aachen, Maximilian also stood at the head of the Holy Roman Empire upon his father's death in 1493.

He was elected King of Germany at Frankfurt on 4 March 1152 and crowned in Aachen on 9 March as King of Italy in Pavia in 1155, and finally crowned Roman Emperor by Pope Adrian IV, on 18 June 1155.