A palatine chapel is any chapel that serves a palace. A chapel is a private church, usually small and often attached to a larger institution such as a college, a hospital, a palace, or a prison. ...

A notable example, sometimes referred simply as "the Palatine Chapel", is the chapel of Charlemagne's winter palace at Aachen, now part of Aachen Cathedral. It is the city's major landmark, and is the reason the French call the city Aix-la-Chapelle. The Chapel was designed by Odo of Metz and was probably built by Lomabard masons using stone salvaged from nearby Roman structures. There is a sixteen-sided aisle with a gallery overhead surrounded its central octagonal dome. The construction, including barrel and groin vaults and an octagonal cloister vault in the dome, reflects late Roman pratices rather than Byzantine techniques employed at San Vitale, and its plan simplifies the complex geometry of the Ravenna building. The main entrance is dominated by a westwerk, that is, the western facade including the entrance vestibule, rooms at one or more levels above, and one or more towers. The addition of a westwerk to churches is one of the Carolingian contributions to the Western Architectureal traditions. Early Christian churches feature freestanding belfries, if they had towers at all, but during the Carolingian period towers were often incoporated as integral components of the church. The dome is made out of concrete, which is denser and heavier. Charlemagne (ca. ... Map of Germany showing Aachen Aachen (French Aix-la-Chapelle, Dutch Aken, Latin Aquisgranum, Ripuarian Oche) is a spa city in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, on the border with Belgium and the Netherlands, 65 km to the west of Cologne, and the westernmost city in Germany, at 50°46′ N... Aachen Cathedral Dom 2004 The Aachen Cathedral, frequently referred to as the Imperial Cathedral (in German: Kaiserdom) of Aachen, is the oldest cathedral in northern Europe. ...