The personal habits of the great king of the Franks have been recorded in great detail by his biographer, Einhard, who wrote the Vita Karoli (Life of Charles). Charlemagne dressed in the Frankish tradition, which included tunic, britches and boots. During the winter, he sometimes wore a fur cloak or cape, but he did not like the styles of other countries and was known only twice, while in Rome, to have donned the long tunic, cloak and sandals of the Roman emperors. He always carried a sword, which was often decorated with a jeweled hilt.
He was an athletic man, who loved hunting and riding. He was also very fond of swimming and, in his palace at Aachen, ordered the construction of a swimming pool. For his great physical size, he had an unusually high-pitched voice.
His habits were regular. He dressed in the morning surrounded by his counts, and if he was told of a problem or dispute, he would call the persons involved before him, question them and pass judgment on the spot. In the mornings, he organized the daily work programs of his various ministers and outlined an agenda for the day.
His attraction to women shocked even the people of his own court (he had five wives, numerous mistresses, and fourteen children), but Charlemagne was apparently an abstemious drinker, who despised drunkenness. He was, however, a voracious eater, in keeping with his large frame. While eating he enjoyed listening to music, and he particularly liked being read to from his favorite book, Augustine’s City of God. He did not learn to read until late in his life, and then he was said always to keep a book under his pillow when he slept.
As he grew older, Charlemagne decided to abandon the concept of a nomadic court which rotated from estate to estate throughout the kingdom in favor of a permanent palace at Aachen. Aachen was the king’s birthplace, and he particularly enjoyed bathing in the spring-fed waters for which the town was famous.
The palace which Charlemagne constructed at Aachen and its accompanying chapel became the major architectural achievement of the Carolingian period. Unlike other Frankish buildings, usually of wood, Charlemagne’s palace was a large stone edifice emulating the imperial scale of the Roman emperors. Under the direction of the king’s master builder, Odo of Metz, the palace complex became a true royal seat. The marble-lined main hall was one hundred fifty feet long, the swimming pool was large enough to hold a hundred bathers at once, and the main courtyard accommodated up to eight thousand people.
From an artistic standpoint, the most impressive part of Odo’s work was the chapel, begun in 792. Thirteen years later it was consecrated by Pope Leo, and it once became a symbol of the majesty of Charlemagne’s Christian empire.
The chapel is an intriguing mixture of borrowed architectural styles, since the Franks did not have their own tradition of monumental construction. The basic polygonal shape of the main chapel was Byzantine, while many other features, such as the arches, were Roman. Two churches seem to have been a model for the Palatine Chapel, as it is called – the Lateran Basilica in Rome, and the Basilica of San Vitale in Ravenna. In fact much of the decorative material was shipped directly from Ravenna, such as the statue of Theodoric, the sixth century king of the Ostragoths, which was placed in the main courtyard.
What was new in the structure were its symmetrical towers. Whether Charlemagne approved of the idea of multiple towers for their use as watchtowers, bell towers, or merely stair towers, it is not clear, but the towers of the Palatine Chapel set a Carolingian stamp on what was basically an imitative work. These towers would not be overlooked, furthermore, in the development of the Roman-esque style a century later.