Aachen Throne, Medieval throne in Aachen Cathedral, Germany

The Throne of Charlemagne is a plain seat of four marble plates clamped with bronze, set on a stone podium reached by six steps in the west gallery of Aachen Cathedral's octagon. It has a high back plate showing an early crucifixion and two side plates, one incised with a nine men's morris board. The throne rests on four stone pillars, and the area is roped off.

Charlemagne had the throne erected in the 790s for his Palatine Chapel, now Aachen Cathedral. From the coronation of Otto the Great in 936 until that of Ferdinand I in 1531, more than thirty Roman-German kings were crowned on it, and by the eleventh century it was called the archstool of the whole realm. Charlemagne himself was crowned in Rome in 800, not here.

The marble slabs come from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, linking royal power to spiritual meaning at this location. Visitors can see in this origin a connection between two religious worlds that meet in Aachen.

You can view the seat from the cathedral gallery, though direct access to it is not permitted. The clearest views come during quieter times when fewer visitors fill the church.

The throne rests on four stone pillars, and visitors once crawled underneath it as an act of humility before a newly anointed ruler and of veneration for Christ. The polished inner faces of the pillars show how many people passed through.