Where to Stay in Aachen, Nordrhein-Westfalen

What is Aachen known for?

Aachen is known as the city of Charlemagne, whose court made it a seat of early medieval Europe. Its centre keeps that inheritance. Aachen Cathedral holds the tomb of Charlemagne and the treasures gathered in the Aachen Cathedral Treasury, while the Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum and the Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst carry its art from old masters to the contemporary.

The city is also a spa town, drawing on the warm springs the Romans named Aquae Granni.

What are the main landmarks in Aachen?

Aachen turns on Aachen Cathedral, the church Charlemagne raised at the heart of his empire. Its treasures fill the Aachen Cathedral Treasury. The Granus Tower stands from the old palace, the Centre Charlemagne tells the city's Carolingian story, and the Couven-Museum keeps its bourgeois interiors, while the Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst and the Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum divide the art between the modern and the old masters.

The Theresienkirche and the Dreifaltigkeitskirche mark the later churches, and the Belvedere water tower rises over the outskirts.

What is the history of Aachen?

Aachen began as a Roman spa built on the warm springs the Romans called Aquae Granni. The waters drew the settlement. Its lasting fame came later, when Charlemagne chose the town as the favoured residence of his court and made it a centre of early medieval Europe in the late eighth and early ninth century.

He built the cathedral that still stands at its heart. As the first Holy Roman Emperor, Charlemagne shaped the Carolingian Empire from here, and after his death he was buried in Aachen Cathedral. The city kept its royal weight for centuries.

A long succession of German rulers were crowned in Aachen, and many were laid to rest beside its founder, in the church that anchors the old town. Known in French as Aix-la-Chapelle and in Dutch as Aken, the city carried its imperial name across three languages, and it holds the borders of Belgium and the Netherlands close to its own.

Where is Aachen?

Aachen lies at the three-lands corner where the borders of Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands come together, well west of Köln. The frontier is close. The city gathers in a shallow basin ringed by low wooded hills, with the Lousberg rising over its northern streets and Von-Halfern-Park greening the slopes below.

Its old core holds tight around Aachen Cathedral, framed within the Meuse-Rhine borderland that reaches east toward Köln.

What is the climate of Aachen?

Aachen holds a mild, damp climate in the hills near the Belgian and Dutch borders. Wet weather is common. Its winters stay cool and grey rather than harsh, while its summers turn warm and green, with cloud and rain frequent across the year over the Lousberg and the old town of Aachen.

How do you get to Aachen?

Aachen is reached from within Germany and across two borders at once. Trains run in from Köln. The city sits on the rail and road corridors of the Meuse-Rhine borderland, so travellers arrive from Belgium and the Netherlands as readily as from Köln and the rest of Nordrhein-Westfalen, and the old town around Aachen Cathedral lies a short way from the main station.