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.

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.

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.

In 1897 Burtscheid was incorporated into the city of Aachen, but the administrative seat stayed there, even though the capital was no longer part of the district.

Charlemagne spent most winters between 792 and his death in 814 in Aachen, which became the focus of his court and the political centre of his empire.

Aachen has a large number of spin-offs from the university's IT-technology department and is a major centre of IT development in Germany.

Aachen is connected to the Autobahn A4 ( West-East ), A44 ( North-South ) and A544 ( a smaller motorway from the A4 to the Europaplatz near the city centre ).

During the 11th and 12th centuries, the Rheno-Mosan or Mosan art movement flourished in the region moving its centre from Cologne and Trier to Liège, Maastricht and Aachen.

Aachen first became a curative centre in Hallstatt times.

The municipality covers an area of 23. 90 km² in the foothills of the Ardennes – Eifelrange and is located about 23 km east of Maastricht and 5 km west of the city centre of Aachen.

The Main Building and the Kármán Hall are 500 m away from the city centre with the Aachen Cathedral, the Audimax ( biggest lecture hall ) and the main refectory are 200 m farther.

The sponsors of the prize, the City of Aachen, refer to Charlemagne as the " Founder of Western Culture ", and assert that under his reign, the City of Aachen was once the spiritual and political centre of the whole of what is now western Europe.

Today, Jülich is mainly known for its world-famous research centre ( established in 1956 ) and the satellite campus of the Fachhochschule Aachen ( established in 1970 ).

It became an important centre of brass production when Protestant brass producers resettled to Stolberg from Aachen around 1600 to escape religious persecution and economic restrictions.

Several smaller stations in the centre of Stolberg are connected to Aachen, Alsdorf, Eschweiler, Dutch Heerlen and Herzogenrath by the euregiobahn, a slower regional train.

In the year of his coronation as King of Franks, 768, Charlemagne came to spend Christmas at Aachen for the first time.

Since 1950, a committee of Aachen citizens annually awards the Karlspreis ( German for ‘ Charlemagne Award ’) to personalities of outstanding service to the unification of Europe.

Aachen is also famous for its carnival ( Karneval, Fasching ), in which families dress in colorful costumes.

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.

Recently, scientists from the Technical University of Aachen ( RWTH ) in Germany analyzed bubble tea samples within a research project in order to look for allergenic substances.

Ulrich Schmidt at RWTH Aachen examined Appel and Haken's proof for his master's thesis.

Around 1439, Gutenberg was involved in a financial misadventure making polished metal mirrors ( which were believed to capture holy light from religious relics ) for sale to pilgrims to Aachen: in 1439 the city was planning to exhibit its collection of relics from Emperor Charlemagne but the event was delayed by one year due to a severe flood and the capital already spent could not be repaid.

He was taken to Aachen by Louis, who there had him tried and condemned to death for treason.

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.

David worked for The New Yorker as a general reporter and war correspondent before he was killed by a landmine near Aachen, Germany in October 1944, less than one month after his arrival to the European Theater of war.

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 ).

When the assembly was concluded, Otto III and his mother Theophanu travelled across the Alps in order for Otto III to receive his coronation at Aachen, the traditional site for the coronation of the German kings.

After occupying Aachen for five days, Lothair returned to France after symbolically disgracing the city.

His election secured, Otto III and his mother, the Empress Theophanu, traveled north across the Alps heading for Aachen, the traditional coronation site for the Ottonians, in order for Otto III to be official crown as king.