Aachen

Built from around 796 as the chapel of Charlemagne's imperial palace, the octagonal Palatine Chapel at the core of Aachen Cathedral is the oldest cathedral north of the Alps and was the first German site added to the UNESCO World Heritage List, in 1978. Charlemagne was buried here in 814, and for over 600 years — from 936 to 1531 — 30 German kings were crowned in the cathedral (the coronation itself took place next door at the Rathaus's Coronation Hall, but the church was central to the ritual). Inside hang the golden Barbarossa chandelier, a gift from Frederick Barbarossa around 1165–70, and the golden shrine (Karlsschrein) that has held Charlemagne's remains since 1215; the marble throne he is said to have used sits in the upper gallery, visible only on a guided tour. Gothic choir extensions were added in the 14th–15th centuries, giving the building its striking mix of Carolingian core and soaring glass-walled 'Aachener Glashaus' choir.

Free to enter the nave; guided tour to see the Imperial Throne and Gothic Choir: adult €7 / reduced €5

Built from 1330 on the site and partly the foundations of Charlemagne's Carolingian palace (the Aula Regia), Aachen's Gothic town hall replaced the older Grashaus as the city's seat of government and, more importantly for its design, as the ceremonial backdrop to royal coronations. Its centerpiece is the Krönungssaal (Coronation Hall) on the upper floor — at 45.7m by 18.3m, one of the largest secular halls of the medieval Holy Roman Empire when completed — decorated with 19th-century frescoes depicting Charlemagne's life and hung with copies of the imperial regalia (the originals are in Vienna). Two of the original towers, the Granusturm, incorporate masonry believed to survive from Charlemagne's own palace complex, making them among the oldest fabric in the city.

Adult €10 / concession €6; free for visitors up to and including age 21; individual guided tour €18 adult / €15 reduced (includes admission)

Dating to around 1267, the Grashaus on the Fischmarkt is thought to be the oldest surviving non-religious building in Aachen and served as the city's first town hall, before the grander Rathaus was built nearby in the 14th century. Over the centuries it also did time as a courthouse, prison, and grain and salt warehouse. Since 2015 it has held 'Station Europa' of the Route Charlemagne, a small free exhibition on European integration and the Charlemagne Prize, aimed particularly at students and casual passers-by.

Free

Created by Aachen sculptor Bonifatius Stirnberg in 1975 and set on Krämerstraße, the pedestrian lane linking the cathedral to the Rathaus, this bronze fountain features eight figures with movable, jointed limbs that visitors are invited to reposition — a horse-and-rider for Aachen's equestrian tradition (the CHIO show-jumping event), a market woman for trade, a prelate for the church, fashion dolls for the textile industry, a professor and a Harlequin for learning and Carnival, and a cockerel on top. No two visits look quite the same.

Free

Built 1822–27 to designs partly credited to the great Prussian architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel, this open colonnade with two flanking pavilions was raised over one of Aachen's hot sulfur springs — the same mineral waters that drew Romans to build baths here as early as the 1st century AD, and that gave Aachen its long history as a spa town ('Bad Aachen'). Two drinking fountains inside the hall still dispense the warm, sulfurous spring water (locals will tell you it smells like rotten eggs — try a sip anyway). Destroyed in WWII, it was faithfully rebuilt in the 1950s and remains the city's classic photo spot and meeting point, a short walk from both the cathedral and the Elisengarten behind it.

Free

Completed around 1257 as the grandest of the gates in Aachen's inner medieval city wall, the twin-turreted Marschiertor is the best-preserved survivor of that fortification ring, most of which was demolished in the 19th century to make way for the boulevard-like Wallring that now circles the old town. It sits a short walk southwest of the Markt on the way to the Hauptbahnhof, and is viewable as an exterior landmark rather than an interior museum.

Free to view from outside

Running northwest from the old town toward RWTH Aachen University, Pontstraße is the spine of Aachen's student quarter — a dense strip of bars, cafes, secondhand bookshops, kebab and falafel counters, and some of the city's best-loved late-night spots, humming with a very different energy from the tourist-facing Markt just a few minutes away. It's less a single sight than a neighborhood to wander through, especially in the evening.

Free to walk

First recorded in the 13th century and named for its status as a 'Franke' — a castle owing fealty to no overlord, before later becoming a fief of the Dukes of Jülich — this triangular lowland castle sits on a low rock outcrop in the Frankenberger Viertel, a quarter of handsome Art Nouveau villas built up around it from the late 19th century. In the early 20th century it served as home and workshop to aviation and engineering pioneer Hugo Junkers. Today it's primarily an events and exhibition venue with no fixed regular public opening hours, but the surrounding Frankenberger Park is open and pleasant to walk year-round, with the castle itself as a striking backdrop.

Park free to walk; castle interior access varies by scheduled event/exhibition

Founded around 997 as a Benedictine convent and later home to Cistercian nuns, Burtscheid Abbey was the spiritual anchor of the spa district south of Aachen's old town for eight centuries, until it was dissolved during the French occupation in 1802. Its parish church, St. Johann Baptist, was rebuilt in a light-filled Baroque style in the 1730s after an earlier fire and today holds a small treasury of medieval reliquaries and vestments beneath its domed nave. The quiet Abteiplatz square outside, framed by the surviving abbey gatehouse (Abteitor), makes an easy, uncrowded stop on a walk through Burtscheid, and pairs naturally with a visit to the Carolus Thermen spa a few minutes away.

Free (donations welcome)

Housed in the cathedral's Gothic cloister buildings just steps from the Dom itself, this is widely regarded as one of the most important ecclesiastical treasuries north of the Alps. Highlights include the Cross of Lothair (c. 1000, one of the finest surviving Ottonian goldsmith works, with an ancient cameo of Augustus set into it), the gilded silver Bust of Charlemagne (c. 1350, a reliquary for part of his skull), the 4th-century Roman Persephone sarcophagus later reused for Carolingian burials, and the Bavarian ivory hunting horn ('Oliphant'). A compact, dense museum best visited as a follow-on from the cathedral itself.

Adult approx. €6 / reduced approx. €3 (rates for church museums can vary slightly by source — confirm at the cathedral information centre or aachenerdom.de)

Opened in 2014 on the Katschhof — the open square between the cathedral and town hall that was once the courtyard of Charlemagne's Carolingian palace — this is Aachen's purpose-built city history museum, tracing the city from the Roman thermal-spring settlement through Charlemagne's empire, the medieval coronation city, and into the 20th century. Interactive stations and multimedia displays (some findings from excavations directly under the building are shown in situ) make it a good orientation stop for understanding why Aachen looks the way it does before tackling the Dom and Rathaus themselves.

Adult approx. €6 / reduced approx. €3 (standard Aachen municipal-museum rate) — confirm at centre-charlemagne.eu

Set in a former pharmacist's townhouse on the Hühnermarkt, this museum recreates bourgeois Aachen interiors from the 18th and early 19th centuries — Rococo, Louis Seize and Biedermeier rooms furnished with original pieces, porcelain and a reconstructed historic pharmacy. It's named for Johann Joseph Couven and his son Jakob, the father-and-son architects behind many of Aachen's finest Baroque buildings, several of which are visible within a short walk of the museum itself.

Adult €6 / reduced €2.50; free for visitors up to and including age 21

Founded on the 19th-century collection of Aachen mayor Barthold Suermondt and later expanded with major gifts from the Ludwig family (the same collectors behind museums in Cologne and Aachen's own Ludwig Forum), this is the city's leading fine-art museum. Its strengths are medieval sculpture and Rhenish religious art, Dutch and Flemish Old Masters, and a well-regarded collection of historic porcelain and applied arts, all displayed in a grand neo-Baroque villa built for the museum in 1901.

Adult approx. €6-8 / reduced approx. €3-4; family tickets available — confirm current rate at suermondt-ludwig-museum.de

Opened in 1991 inside a striking former umbrella factory on Jülicher Straße, the Ludwig Forum holds part of the vast Peter and Irene Ludwig collection — the same patrons behind Cologne's Museum Ludwig — with strengths in American Pop Art, German art since 1960, and Cuban and Chinese contemporary art, alongside a busy program of touring exhibitions. It's a short tram/bus ride or a 20–25 minute walk north of the old town.

Adult approx. €6 / reduced approx. €3

Tucked on Pontstraße in a historic townhouse, this small museum traces the history of newspapers and print journalism from the earliest printed news-sheets to the modern press, drawing on an archive of hundreds of thousands of historic newspapers held by the affiliated research institute. It's a niche, low-key stop best suited to visitors with a specific interest in media or printing history rather than a must-see for a first visit.

Adult €6 / reduced €3; free for visitors up to and including age 21

Laid out behind the Elisenbrunnen in the 1850s, this compact city-center garden sits on top of part of the Roman spa quarter that first drew settlement to Aachen — excavations uncovered foundations and hypocaust heating channels from the Roman baths, now protected and viewable through a glass archaeological pavilion (the 'Archäologisches Fenster') in the middle of the lawns. A quiet, shaded pause a minute's walk from the Elisenbrunnen and Markt.

Free

Aachen's sulfurous hot springs — among the hottest in Central Europe, historically prized by the Romans and later by Charlemagne, who is said to have particularly loved bathing here — still feed this large modern thermal-bath complex on the edge of the Stadtgarten. It combines multiple thermal pools (indoor and outdoor), a big sauna landscape, and wellness facilities, and is a genuinely popular way to spend a half-day the way locals have for two millennia, rather than just reading about the tradition in a museum.

Thermal bath only: €19 (Sat–Sun/holidays €21); thermal bath + sauna: €40 (Sat–Sun/holidays €44); summer flat-rate offer runs roughly Jul 1 – Aug 31

Built 1914–16 as Aachen's grand new spa house during the city's heyday as a fashionable 'Bad Aachen' resort, the Neues Kurhaus fronts the leafy Stadtgarten park north of the old town. It later housed the city's casino for decades, though the casino relocated to the Tivoli stadium area in 2015; after an extensive, multi-year renovation the building is being revived as a congress and events venue (operated by Aachen Event, formerly Eurogress Aachen), with a planned reopening around summer 2026 — treat it primarily as a handsome exterior/park landmark unless there's a specific public event on.

Free to walk the Stadtgarten and view the exterior; interior access depends on scheduled events at the venue

Rising to 264 meters just north of the old town, the Lousberg was mined for flint tools as far back as 3500 BC and was landscaped into a public park in 1807 — one of the earliest parks in Europe created for general public use rather than as a private princely garden. Paths wind up through woods to open grass slopes with a genuine panoramic view over Aachen's rooftops and cathedral toward the hills of the Eifel and the nearby borders with Belgium and the Netherlands; hammocks strung on the northern slope and bronze statues illustrating a local devil legend add some local color along the way.

Free

Built in 1956–1958 as a functional water tower crowning the Lousberg hill, the Belvedere gained a rotating restaurant on its top floor in 1966, giving it a 360-degree view over Aachen and the surrounding hills while diners ate. The ground-floor restaurant and beer garden have been closed since 2014, but the rotating upper level still operates for private events and a regular Sunday brunch, and the striking cylindrical tower itself remains a free, photogenic landmark to walk past on a Lousberg outing even without going inside.

Free to view from outside; interior access currently limited to booked events and Sunday brunch — check current terms directly