In honor of Charlemagne's death 1199 years ago

[Bradamante]

Next year will be the 1200th anniversary of Charlemagne's death on January 28th, 814. There will be many events planned to commemorate the anniversary in his capital of Aachen, Germany.

Until then, I wanted to share with you gentleman a blog post I composed to honor that milestone.

http://lcmccabe.blogspot.com/2013/01/charlemagne-died-january-28th-814.html

There are many photos taken from my trips to France, Italy and Germany while researching my novel based on the legends of Charlemagne.

Here is a photo that is not in the blog post, but I wanted to share it with you. I am standing before a statue of Charlemagne that had been on the cathedral in Reims, France but has been taken down due to its fragile state. It is now in the cathedral's treasury building.

[Sir James A]

Wow, that's a statue! Those huge tapestries are great, too.

I believe I spot the same photo about halfway down the blog post. And, excellent pictures and history in that blog post!

[Sir Edward]

Wow, excellent! It'll be interesting to see what sorts of events are held next year. Charlemagne is such a huge historical figure (literally if you believe the statue)

[Sir Wolf]

why let have one then!

[Bradamante]

Wow, that's a statue! Those huge tapestries are great, too.

I believe I spot the same photo about halfway down the blog post. And, excellent pictures and history in that blog post!

Oops. Sorry about that. I should have re-read the blog post before I linked to it here. In fact, I should have linked to it here shortly after I posted it, rather than thinking about it days later. That way some of you here might have been able to play the "guess what happened on this date in history back in 814?" game.

I had forgotten that I posted a picture of me in the blog post and thought I had decided against it.  So think of it as a sampler to show what else will await you if you follow the link.

By the way, when we traveled to Aachen in the summer of 2011, there was a lot of construction going on around the city. It was in anticipation of the 1200th anniversary of Charlemagne's death to be celebrated in 2014. I was unable to get a picture of the mosaics at the top of the octagon in the cathedral as there was large scaffolding in place for the cleaning/restoration.

They were also building a large Charlemagne Center that will be opening sometime this year.

I looked online at the website for the Route Charlemagne and it does not appear to have anything listed yet for 2014. Here is the link for those who might wish to add a bookmark and check back later.

http://www.route-charlemagne.eu/Startseite/index.html] [url]http://www.route-charlemagne.eu/Startseite/index.html[/url]

[Sir James A]

Seems you've had quite the tour of Europe. I hope I can have half of that experience some day.

[Lord Dane]

Traveling is in itself a necessity for any good author as much as research into any story (if anything, just for perspective & experience).