Visiting Aachen Cathedral in Germany

jana meerman aachen cathedral germany-03

We had just spent a night in Cologne, in northwestern Germany, to visit the immersive art exhibit about Claude Monet, one of my favourite painters.

→ Check out my guide to visiting Cologne!

With the rest of our Sunday stretching empty before us, we decided to add on a few more stops to our roadtrip itinerary before heading back to Munich, where my partner currently lives. And so it was that we found ourselves in nearby Aachen, a German city in the far west of the country, bordering Belgium and the Netherlands.

→ You can visit the spot where these three countries all touch at The Three Country Point (Dreiländereck / Dreinlandenpunt).

The main reason I wanted to visit Aachen was to see the incredible Aachen Cathedral, the very first UNESCO World Heritage Site in Germany.

How to Get to Aachen

By flight: The main airport servicing Aachen is actually across the border in the Netherlands at the Maastricht-Aachen International Airport. From this airport, you can take bus 30 for less than ten minutes into Meerssen and then transfer to the S43 train which takes just 45 minutes to Aachen.

The Cologne Bonn Airport is also relatively close to Aachen. From this airport you can take a direct Flixbus in one hour to Aachen or you can take a train to Koln-Ehrenfeld and then an S-Bahn the rest of the way to Aachen.

By car: Of course, if you have your own wheels you can travel to Aachen by car. We drove by car from Cologne, where we had started our weekend trip, stopping at the horse stables at Burg Stammeln on the way. As our main goal was to visit the Aachen Cathedral, we parked nearby at the Parkhaus am Dom.

→ Check out where you can park in Aachen.

By train: Trains arrive in Aachen from across Germany, neighbouring Belgium and the Netherlands and the rest of Europe. The main train station or Hauptbahnhof is southeast of the city, less than 20 minutes from the Aachen Cathedral on foot or you can take bus 11, 21 or 51 part of the way.

By bus: FlixBus services Aachen with direct connections from 99 cities.

How to Get Around Aachen

Visiting Aachen Cathedral

The most famous attraction in Aachen is the Aachen Cathedral, the very first UNESCO World Heritage Site in Germany.

Aachen Cathedral is one of Europe's oldest cathedrals, opened in 805

Perhaps the key defining moment that firmly anchored Aachen on the world stage was when the Emperor Charlemagne, the first medieval Emperor of Western Europe crowned in 800 by Pope Leo III in Rome, chose Aachen as his primary residence. The Aachen Cathedral is now Charlemagne's final resting place since 814.

It is completely free to visit Aachen Cathedral, however the royal throne that Charlemagne once sat on can only be viewed with a paid private tour, daily in both English and German.

→ Check out the guided tour schedule and purchase your tickets on their website.

Walking around the outside

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Jana Meerman

Hi! I’m Jana, a Dutch-German-British-Canadian with a dream of seeing every country in the world. I am a storyteller, photographer and adventurer passionate about documenting and sharing my travels.

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