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 the first German city to be captured by the Allies.

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 was erected on the orders of Charlemagne in AD 786 and was on completion the largest cathedral north of the Alps.

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

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.

On 21 October 1944, when Aachen capitulated, more than 70 % of all buildings of the university were destroyed or heavily damaged.

Thus by 1848, the towns of Aachen, Cologne and Düsseldorf were heavily industrialized with a number of different industries represented.

Taking up positions along the Wurm River, the 30th launched its attack on the heavily defended city of Aachen on 2 October 1944, and succeeded in contacting the 1st Division, 16 October, resulting in the encirclement and takeover of Aachen.

The birth of this son damaged the Partition of Aachen, as Louis's attempts to provide for his fourth son met with stiff resistance from his older sons, and the last two decades of his reign were marked by civil war.

The city and its fortified sourroundings were encircled 13 September – 16 October 1944 by the US 1st Infantry Division and 3rd Armored Division in conjunction with the US 2nd Armored Division and 30th Infantry Division during the prolonged Battle of Aachen, later reinforced by US 28th Infantry Division elements.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, one of the founders of modern architecture and the last director of the Bauhaus during its period in Dessau and Berlin was born in Aachen as well.

He was mediator during the 1668 peace of Aachen, in the wars of succession between France, Spain, England and the Netherlands.

The plan was an ideal of what a well-designed and well-supplied monastery should have, as envisioned by one of the synods held at Aachen for the reform of monasticism in the Frankish empire during the early years of emperor Louis the Pious ( between 814 and 817 ).

As a successful diplomat between 1802 and 1819, Humboldt was plenipotentiary Prussian minister at Rome from 1802, ambassador at Vienna from 1812 during the closing struggles of the Napoleonic Wars, at the congress of Prague ( 1813 ) where he was instrumental in drawing Austria to ally with Prussia and Russia against France, a signer of the peace treaty at Paris and the treaty between Prussia and defeated Saxony ( 1815 ), at Frankfurt settling post-Napoleonic Germany, and at the congress at Aachen in 1818.

Some of his relics were taken to Germany during the Middle Ages ; his head was claimed by Kornelimünster Abbey near Aachen.

Albert of Aix-la-Chapelle or Albert of Aachen ( floruit circa AD 1100 ), historian of the First Crusade, was born during the later part of the 11th century, and afterwards became canon and custos of the church of Aachen.

In September the American tank armies in Lorraine literally ran out of gas, and during October the Allied offensive gradually lost momentum and came to a halt on a line well west of the German border in most sectors, although the frontier city of Aachen fell on 21 October.

The church is the oldest cathedral in northern Europe and was known as the " Royal Church of St. Mary at Aachen " during the Middle Ages.

Following a custom begun in 1349, every seven years the relics are taken out of the shrine and put on display during the Great Aachen Pilgrimage.

New envoys of Hemming are reported meeting Charlemagne in Aachen during November, 811.

Ludwig was born in Berlin to a musical family ; her father, Anton Ludwig, was a tenor and an operatic administrator, her mother, the mezzo-soprano Eugenie Besalla-Ludwig who sang at the Aachen Opera during Herbert von Karajan's period as conductor.

These tremendous frontline losses required ever-more troops to be fed into the fighting ; for instance, a freshly reinforced battalion of the US 28th Infantry Division was immediately thrown into direct assaults against Aachen to buttress the depleted US 1st Infantry Division during the final stages of the battle on 18 – 21 October.

The Germans lost another 5, 100 casualties during the fighting in Aachen itself, including 3, 473 prisoners.

Aix derives from Latin Aquae ( literally, " waters "; cf Aix-la-Chapelle ( Aachen ) or Aix-en-Provence ), and Aix was a bath during the Roman Empire, even before it was renamed Aquae Gratianae to commemorate the Emperor Gratian, who was assassinated not far away, in Lyon, in 383.

The valuable port city of Antwerp had been captured during the push, and by the time winter arrived, the Allies even had control of German territory near the city of Aachen.

In 1442 Ludwig IV, Count Palatine, held a reception and electoral banquet there for King Frederick of Habsburg as he was en route to Aachen to be crowned Emperor, but during the 15th and 16th centuries the castle sank into insignificance.

Al-Udri reports that Aysun was taken prisoner during the capture of Girona and sent to Aachen.

His Mémoire sur l ' état actuel de l ' Allemagne, written at the request of Tsar Alexander I during the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle, was an attack on the German universities, repeated in Coup d ' oeil sur les universites de l ' Allemagne ( Aachen, 1818 ).

After World War II, during which his family lived in Switzerland, von Puttkamer studied mechanical engineering at Konstanz and the Technische Hochschule ( RWTH Aachen ) in Aachen, graduating with a university degree.

Frederick II may have been inspired to build to this shape by either the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, which he had seen while during the Sixth Crusade, or by the Palace Chapel of Aachen Cathedral.