Private travel piece, no connection to my employer

Happening to spend a night in Aachen this month, I used the good weather the following afternoon to record my impressions of the German city which was once the capital of Western Europe under Charlemagne (742-814). Charles the Great, as he is also known, was not my chief interest, however – rather it was the Suermondt Ludwig Museum of fine art as it has some work by one of my favourite artists, August Macke (1887-1914).

As it turned out, the section containing Macke was closed for technical reasons but that hardly mattered because the museum had on a temporary exhibition of work by another German artist, local man Carl Schneiders (1905-75), which was like something out of a very good dream. The video below starts with one of his paintings, a view of the church of St Johann in Burtscheid, and then skips around some of the city’s sights, including some dancing at the Elisenbrunnen pump room, before taking in the museum, the Schneiders exhibition and the museum’s very pretty cafe, Café Wunderkammer. I’ve added some music I recorded on my walk around the city.

The equestrian monument is of Emperor Frederick III (1831-1888).

I had an excellent breakfast of warm rolls and coffee at the Kaussen bakery and cafe on Templergraben which you can see briefly at the very end of the video.