Baroque ‘citrus press’ roof above octagonal former Palatine Chapel built for Frankish Emperor Charlemagne or Charles the Great (747-814 AD) in his palace at Aachen, North-Rhine Westphalia, Germany. For 600 years German kings, queens and Holy Roman Emperors were crowned here. It is now at the heart of the city’s cathedral, the Aachener Dom.
Aachen, North-Rhine Westphalia, Germany: a distinctive late-1600s Baroque ‘citrus press’ roof, topped by a central lantern, surmounts the octagonal former Palatine Chapel or Pfalzkapelle consecrated in 805 AD within the palace of the Frankish Emperor Charlemagne or Charles the Great (747-814 AD). The chapel is now at the heart of the city’s cathedral, the Aachener Dom. At the time of its construction, it was the largest church north of the Alps. For six hundred years, from 936 to 1531, it served as a Kaiserdom, a coronation church in which 30 German kings - most of them also Holy Roman Emperors - and 12 queens were crowned. Although the Aachener Dom has only been a cathedral with its own diocese since the 1930s, it is one of Germany’s oldest churches and is among the country’s earliest buildings still in continuous use. The lofty stone structure, rising (103 ft), was designed as the Royal Chapel of Saint Mary within the palace at Aachen, which is known to the French as Aix-la-Chapelle. Its Armenian architect, Eudes or Odo of Metz, re-used columns and marble from ancient buildings in Rome, Ravenna, Trier and Cologne and is thought to have been modelled the structure on the Byzantine Basilica of San Vitale in Ravenna, Italy. Despite Romanesque, Gothic and Baroque additions to the church and widespread World War II destruction in Aachen, the octagon has survived in its original form. Inside, it contains Charlemagne’s original marble imperial throne, the Karlsthron, a gilded Romanesque shrine containing his remains, original bronze doors and railings cast in a local foundry and also fine inlaid marble panels and Prussian neo-Byzantine mosaics dating from the late-19th and early 20th centuries. Charlemagne’s successor, Otto III, is also buried here.
Size: 2832px × 4256px
Location: Aachen, North-Rhine Westphalia, Germany.
Photo credit: © Terence Kerr / Alamy / Afripics
License: Royalty Free
Model Released: No
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