Aachen's hot springs drew Celts, Romans and finally Charlemagne
Warm mineral springs explain almost everything about Aachen. People settled beside them some 5,000 years ago, Celts worshipped a healing god there, Romans built bathhouses, and Charlemagne made the town the heart of his empire. Thirty-one German kings were later crowned in the city.
The city's name goes back to an Old High German word for water or stream, matching the Latin Aquae used by the Romans. Their town was Aquae Granni, the waters of Grannus, a Celtic god of healing and light. French speakers called it Aix, later Aix-la-Chapelle to separate it from Aix-en-Provence once Charlemagne built his palace chapel there. Flint quarries on nearby hills show Neolithic activity from around 3000 BC, and Bronze Age burial mounds survive too.
Roman soldiers of the 6th Legion appear to have first channelled the springs into a spa early in the 1st century AD, and by its end the town had a second bath complex, two water pipelines and a colonnaded forum joining them. Around 375 the baths were destroyed as the migration period began, and by 470 Aachen answered to the Ripuarian Franks in Cologne. The town also had a thriving Jewish community in Roman times.
Pepin the Short built a residence there, and his son Charlemagne wintered in Aachen most years from 792 until his death in 814, making it his political capital. Its nickname, the cradle of Europe, comes from that era. In 802 a Jewish merchant named Isaac returned from the court of Harun al-Rashid bringing the emperor an elephant called Abul-Abbas. Charlemagne was buried in his own chapel, now the cathedral, though the original tomb is lost. Frederick Barbarossa granted city rights in 1166, and coronations ran from 936 to 1531 before Frankfurt took over.
Modern Aachen has about 264,000 people and is Germany's westernmost major city, bordering Belgium and the Netherlands, roughly 61 km west of Cologne. Its RWTH university is among Germany's leading technical institutions, and its teaching hospital is the largest single-building hospital in Europe. The local dialect carries strong Limburgish influence from across the Dutch border. Aachen also ranks with Cologne and Mainz as a carnival stronghold and is famous for Printen, a spiced gingerbread.
Source: Aachen
