Aachen Chapel of Hungary

Aachen Chapel of Hungary (Hungarian: Aacheni magyar kápolna, Aachener Ungarnkapelle, Chapelle Hongroise d'Aix-la-Chapelle) is a side chapel of the Aachen Cathedral (Aachener Dom), one of the oldest cathedrals in Europe.

Hungarian pilgrims have shared a bond with Aachen Cathedral and its relics for nearly seven hundreds. Since 1349, every seventh year, the holy relics of Christ's incarnation have drawn throngs of pilgrims — including from Hungary — to the German coronation city of six centuries. The foundation of the Hungarian Chapel in Aachen was connected to the pilgrimages known as Aachenfahrt or Heiligtumsfahrt, in which Hungarian pilgrims took part in great numbers. Aachen was the third most important pilgrimage site in medieval Europe, next to Rome and Santiago de Compostela. In Germany, the custom of the Aachenfahrt is linked to the veneration of the relics of the Holy Land donated to the Aachen Cathedral by the Frankish Emperor Charlemagne. In Hungary, this tradition, of which we only have certain records from the beginning of the 14th century, was probably introduced by settlers from the Walloon and Rhineland regions. The Aachen Rites soon became attractive to Hungarian believers through the Germans who settled in Hungary.

According to contemporary chronicles, despite the distance of over a thousand and two hundred kilometres, Hungarians were always the most numerous of all nations to participate in the Aachen farewell processions, with some years seeing over five thousand Hungarian pilgrims. The procession of pilgrim groups of hundreds of people - some of them by water, the Danube and the Rhine - lasted several weeks, usually more than a month. They followed the route Vienna - Passau - Regensburg - Nuremberg - Frankfurt - Mainz - Koblenz. On their way to Aachen, the Hungarian pilgrims could also stop in Cologne, where there was a lodging house reserved just for them. Wealthy Hungarians also built beautiful houses around the cathedral, most of which still decorate the old town. In 1804 they were evicted by Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, whose favorite residence was Aachen.

Church data from Wikidata (CC0). Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).