Of course, the reality does not always live up to this ideal, and such was one day I spent in Aachen.

It turned out to be a wet public holiday and on top of that I was suffering the fall-out from badly cooked moussaka I had eaten the night before.

In the morning the only place I could find open was an elegant coffee house not far from the Dom, the cathedral in the heart of the city, and here I took stock. Outside the square was very quiet.

The Romans came here for the hot springs and called the place Aquae Granni after a Celtic goddess.

The emperor Charlemagne chose it as his capital in 768 AD and it remained the coronation place of German kings for another 600 years.

I plowtered through the wet streets, the rain leaking through the hood of my jacket, bought my ticket for the following day's rail journey and checked my e-mails in an internet café.

The price was 60 cents for half an hour — very good value — so I logged on to The Inverness Courier website and read the previous Friday's front page.

In the centre of the city, water from the hot springs flows continually into a marble basin from a tap in the shape of the mouth of a golden lion.

A strong smell of hydrogen sulphide hangs around the fountain and the water is hot — 52 degrees Centigrade.

While I was reading the bumpf on the notice, a passerby assured me it was really good for rheumatism.

Who knows, it might even be effective in cases of badly cooked moussaka, so I took a swig.

It was foul and I wanted to spit it out. Grannie can keep her waters.

Aachen has another claim to notice among us of the fourth estate. It was here in 1850 that Israel Berr Josaphat Reuter set up the world's first-ever news agency.

His premises are now a newspaper museum. I found the building, Pontstrasse 13, fronted by a formidable door — but it was closed of course.

A service was in progress in the Dom. I sat at the back and listened to the organ music and the voices of the choir fall among the pillars, along with the whiff of incense smoke. Now there were more people about and it turned out that the Dom, which I had thought about to close, would be open in the afternoon, with the last tour of the day in English set to start at two o'clock.

This was a stroke of luck. I paid for my 3-euro ticket and joined a fairly large group, flocking in the wake of our guide.

The only bit of the Dom surviving from Charlemagne's day is the inner octagonal chapel and that, too, has been considerably modified in its long existence.

But, said the guide, there was a 1,200-year-old bronze rail on the first-floor gallery and the immense chandelier above us dated from the reign of Frederick Barbarossa in the 12th century.

It is an immense ring of copper with a representation of Jerusalem as described in the Book of Revelation. It weighs 250 kilos and hangs on a 26-metre chain that is 800 years old.

We gazed reverently at this and shuffled sideways just in case.

We followed the guide upstairs to see Charlemagne's marble throne, to be told it may not have been his throne, since the first record of its existence dates only from 150 years after his death.

However, Charlemagne's throne it is called — a chair made from slabs of plain marble brought from Rome.

At its maximum Charlemagne's empire extended over most of Western Europe, from the Bay of Biscay to what is now Austria. Because of this he is fancifully seen as a harbinger of the EU.

At the end of the tour some members of the group fell to talking about the division of the Empire after Charlemagne's death, and how the two principal parts became, in time, Germany and France. "That's when all the trouble started," said a white-haired man with a twinkle.

Printer friendly version

Email this article to a friend

Bookmark this

---