Press releases

• Kornelimünster is home to the oldest buildings still in use as residential buildings in the city. The top 5 are located on Benediktusplatz and Korneliusmarkt.
• The city of Aachen's heritage authority has used special scientific methods to determine the exact age of the buildings.
• The research work was made possible in the aftermath of the devastating floods, when several owners of affected historic buildings in the Indetal valley came into contact with the municipal heritage experts.

Aachen's oldest known residential building is currently located in the historic center of Kornelimünster. This is the result of recent building research by the municipal monument authority. The building has been standing at Benediktusplatz 20 since 1438 in its still existing basic structure. Other particularly old residential buildings have been discovered in the immediate vicinity as part of the scientific investigations. They are also grouped around the center of Kornelimünster and have been dated to 1468, 1474, 1480 and 1490/91.

The secret of the building's age lies in the roof truss
Dr. Andreas Priesters from the Lower Monument Authority of the City of Aachen, together with experts from the Landschaftsverband Rheinland (LVR) and thanks to the permission of the respective owners to take a closer look at the buildings, has discovered these new and important findings for Aachen's architectural history. Priesters explains the building at Benediktusplatz 20: "Hidden behind the stone façade is a half-timbered house that is still partly late Gothic with a fully preserved roof, gable wall at the back, ceiling beams and chimney. However, the baroque conversion, which includes the stone façade that we can see today, is also remarkable."

But how do experts like Priesters manage to date a building that is almost 600 years old so precisely? "We use a complex scientific procedure called dendrochronological testing," explains Priesters. After all, the best way for experts to uncover the secret of the building's age is to look deep into the roof truss. The roof trusses of the aforementioned buildings in Kornelimünster date back to medieval times and are well preserved. "In dendrochronology, cores are taken from beams and analyzed in the laboratory. The different distances between the annual rings of the tree from which the beams were made are so specific that they can be sorted into regional chronologies and, in the best case, the year the tree was felled, i.e. the last grown annual ring, can be defined. As the timber was usually freshly installed, this also provides a year of construction or at least a limited period of time when the timber was installed," explains Priesters.

Today's stone façades were only added in the Baroque period
In Kornelimünster, the destruction caused by the flood disaster in summer 2021 in particular led to many owners of affected historic houses in Kornelimünster coming into contact with the heritage authority. As a result of surveys and renovation work, the municipal expert Priesters was given the opportunity to carry out building research directly on site - with remarkable results now available. "In Kornelimünster in particular, it turned out that most of the façades from the Baroque period that we see today are just an imitation of a much older (half-timbered) house. The oak roof trusses, cellars, rear facades and interior structures of the original buildings were still used despite more recent conversions and have been preserved to this day. After all, wood was expensive. From the 16th century onwards, the half-timbered parts were increasingly replaced by stone construction," Andreas Priesters continues.

This is why the buildings in Aachen itself are mostly younger
And why haven't the basic structures of the old residential and commercial buildings in Aachen's city center been preserved as well? Monika Krücken, Head of the Aachen Monument Authority, explains the reason: "In Aachen itself -
according to the current state of affairs - no roof is older than 1656. In that year, around 90 percent burned down in the devastating Aachen city fire. This means that the roof trusses and wooden structures that survived the Second World War are few and far between in Aachen's city center and are no older; the same applies to Burtscheid." If there are any medieval buildings left in Aachen's city center, they are generally limited to the cellars and walls of the basements - in addition to a few prominent buildings such as the cathedral, the preserved city gates, the town hall and the building in Pontstraße that is now used by the newspaper museum. However, these are sometimes difficult for experts to date.

With the new findings from Kornelimünster, the city's heritage authority is in any case adding further exciting aspects to Aachen's already rich history. It cannot be ruled out that the "Top 5" of the oldest residential buildings that have now become known will have to be updated again in the future. Because: "We are continuing to research Aachen's historical building stock wherever we can," Monika Krücken and Andreas Priesters assure us.

The top 5
These are Aachen's oldest known residential buildings. The respective years of origin of the buildings have been determined by dendrochronological studies:

1) Benediktusplatz 20 (1438): Hidden behind the stone façade is a half-timbered house that is still partially late Gothic with a fully preserved roof, rear gable wall, ceiling beams and chimney; the Baroque conversion, which also includes the stone façade, is noteworthy.

2) Korneliusmarkt 54 (1468): The large, two-part stone façade conceals an extensive late Gothic half-timbered building with a roof truss.

3) Korneliusmarkt 52 (1476): An inconspicuous, relatively narrow stone façade from the late 18th century, but like its neighbors, it conceals a late Gothic building that was extended at the rear in 1552

4) Korneliusmarkt 56 / Benediktusplatz 2 (1480): A well-known and striking large half-timbered double house in Kornelimünster. It was examined by Prof. Schild and students from the RWTH back in the 1980s. It impresses with the only visible half-timbered façade in the bracing of the compartments (the areas between the vertical and horizontal beams) with St. Andrew's crosses, typical of urban half-timbered buildings.

5) Benediktusplatz 24 (1490/91): Two buildings have grown together; the core of the right-hand part of the house with roof truss dates from 1490/91, the left-hand part on the corner of Korneliusstrasse was added around 1630. Today, the building is characterized by a wide façade - below with presumably baroque bluestone panels, above with Art Nouveau elements.


Further information on building research
Building research is a specialist discipline within the framework of monument preservation and architectural history. There are independent offices, building research departments in the state offices for the preservation of monuments and building research is also part of the work of the Lower Monument Authority in the city of Aachen - just like archaeology, with which there are overlaps. In-depth knowledge about the history of a building can be used as a basis for planning and work and often sheds a whole new light on a building. Researching monuments and publishing these findings within an appropriate framework is anchored in the NRW Monument Protection Act.

The "search" for the oldest residential buildings in the city is not an explicitly formulated goal, and is in fact quite difficult for experts. One question that arises in this context is the definition: does a house that was only temporarily used as a residential building also count? The question of how much of a building is still "old" is also difficult. For example, only relatively few parts of Aachen's oldest town hall, the Grashaus, are truly medieval, with the majority dating back to the 19th century.

After all, our ancestors were always interested in tasteful redesigns and structural adaptations or were obliged to do so if, for example, the sovereign demanded solid construction instead of timber construction, as has been the case in various fire protection ordinances since the 16th century. And there is something else that experts take into account: The dates often given above historical doors or in documents do not necessarily correspond to the actual year of construction, but often only indicate a construction phase or, in rare cases, are reused.