In the city of Aachen, westernmost city of Germany

 Charlemagne (Charles the Great) is often described as the “Father of Europe” (Pater Europae), as he united most of Western Europe for the first time since the classical era of the Roman Empire, as well as uniting parts of Europe that had never been under Frankish or Roman rule.

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(in the westernmost city of Germany) Aachen has been around for millennia. The Romans nursed their war wounds and stiff joints in the steaming waters of its mineral springs, but it was Charlemagne who put the city firmly on the European map; he made Aachen the geographical and political capital of his vast Frankish Empire in 974 (arguably the first empire with European dimensions). Best known as the capital of Charlemagne's Frankish empire, today's Aachen sits at the juncture where Germany meets the Netherlands (the Dutch know it as Aken) and Belgium (where "Walloons" call it Aix-la-Chapelle). Yet Aachen's history goes back even further than 8th-century Charlemagne. Roman soldiers dating back to the 1st century CE cherished its hot springs. Originally a Roman spa called Aquisgranum, the city of Aachen rose to prominence in the late 8th century during the rule of Charlemagne, becoming his favorite residence and a center of Western culture and learning. The city was fortified in the late 12th century and granted municipal rights in 1166 and 1215, and it became a free imperial city about 1250.

+ Aachen did develop from the Roman settlement and thermae (bath complex), subsequently becoming the preferred medieval Imperial residence of Emperor Charlemagne of the Frankish Empire, and, from 936 to 1531, the place where 31 Holy Roman Emperors were crowned Kings of the Germans. (In the 1560s the coronation site was changed to Frankfurt am Main.)

+ Over the centuries, Charlemagne has been enlisted as a figurehead of rival nations and ideologies. In the modern era he has become a symbol of peaceful European unity. It suited the founders of Europe’s post-war institutions to showcase Aachen, a city close to the intersection of Germany, France, and the Benelux lands.

+ Objectively as well as symbolically, Charlemagne was a pivotal figure in his continent’s history. At his death in 814, he controlled what today are France, Germany, the Low Countries and northern Italy; he had overrun central Europe as far east as Hungary. Using Christianity, Latin, and literacy as instruments of soft power, he began turning these lands into a single cultural and commercial realm. On Christmas Day in the year 800, he was crowned as emperor (a sovereign of many peoples (not just one) by the pope. The ceremony in Rome was a spectacular challenge to the worldly and spiritual masters of Constantinople, until then the strongest claimants to the mantle of ancient Rome, and to the leadership of Christendom. Charlemagne’s legacy lives on in the stunning Dom, which in 1978 became Germany’s first UNESCO World Heritage Site, as well as in the new Centre Charlemagne and the Route Charlemagne walking trail.