Pilgerfahrt

This weekend I finally made my pilrimage to Aachen to visit the Dom. For my German class last spring I wrote a paper about the Dom in Aachen, and therefore had to go and visit.
Aachen is not far from Bonn in the far western edge of Germany. It's less then 10 km from both Holland and Belgium.
The history of the church is fascinating. The central, main part of the Dom (the Octogon) was built around 790 AD for Charlemagne (Karl der Grosse), and in the 14th and 15th centuries smaller chapels and a large gothic choir were added because Aachen was a popular place for Christian pilgrams. Though Charlemagne himself was not crowned king of the Holy Roman Empire in Aachen, from 900 to 1531, 30 other kings were. I went on a guided tour and saw the throne used by the Holy Roman Emperors, which is amazingly simple compared to the decorations in the church and was able to see the shrine containing the Four Aachen Relics and the shirne containing the remains of Charlemagne himself up close. Both of which, of course, were made out of gold. The architeture is also facinating. The Octogon is, as one would expect, octogon shaped, and the distance from floor to ceiling is about 90 feet. On the ceiling is a beautiful, gold mosaic, which was remade at the end of the 19th century. Unfortunetly no one's sure exactly how it looked at the time of Karl der Grosse, but it's probably close. Anyho! I could ramble on and on, but as they say, a picture's worth a thousand words.

Here are my photos:



Here is one side of the Octogon. You can see on the top floor is an arch with four columns. These columns are made our of marble and the origninals Charlemagne brought back from Italy, but at some point when France was storming through the land, the soldiers broke the columns out and took them back to Italy. A couple are built into the Louve (the big art museum in Paris), and eventually about 2/3s were returned. Otherwise all of the walls are covered in marble slabs. This is also not original but added at the end of the 19th century.



This is a picture of the outside (obviously). The bit in the middle is the Octogon. The gothic choir hall is the big bit on the left.

Here's a link with much better pictures if you're interested:

http://www.oih.rwth-aachen.de/~hendrik/aachenerdom.html

Ok. Enough about the cathedral.
Today my roommate and I visited the house that Beethoven was born in. I'd already been there once, but it was interesting to go back after my German had improved significantly.
Otherwise there's nothing really new with me. I can already tell the days are getting longer, and that makes me very happy.
Have a good week everyone!