Imperial Palace of Goslar: A Medieval Imperial Residence in Germany
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.5
- Popularity
- Medium
- Country
- Germany
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Modern
- Civilizations
- German, Holy Roman Empire
- Site type
- Civic
- Remains
- Palace
On this page15 sections
History
The Imperial Palace of Goslar is a medieval imperial residence in Goslar, Germany, built and expanded by German kings and emperors from the Ottonian and Salian periods. Its origins probably lie in an Ottonian royal hunting lodge, while Henry II established an imperial residence here around 1005. The nearby silver and copper deposits of Rammelsberg, the mine-bearing hill beside Goslar, helped make the palace important, and Goslar eventually surpassed the nearby palace of Werla in status.
Ottonian Origins and Salian Expansion
Conrad II began enlarging the palace district in the 1030s, including the foundation of the Church of Our Lady. His son Henry III brought the complex to completion and presided over its medieval peak. In 1048 he summoned Benno II to Goslar. Benno, who later became Bishop of Osnabrück, directed the completion of the new Kaiserhaus and the Collegiate Church of St. Simon and St. Jude during the first half of the 1050s.
An imperial palace, or Pfalz, was a residence and administrative centre used by a medieval German ruler during itinerant government. It was not necessarily a permanent capital. Goslar became one of five medieval imperial palace complexes in what is now Lower Saxony and a preferred residence of the Salian emperors, the dynasty that ruled the Holy Roman Empire from 1024 to 1125. The chronicler Lambert of Hersfeld described it as the “most famous residence in the empire.”
The palace district included several religious foundations. The Church of Our Lady served as the original palace chapel. The double chapel of St. Ulrich was built in the first half of the twelfth century, and its upper storey was added during a later change of plan or enlargement, probably in the second half of that century. A younger residential palace stood beside it, but that building no longer survives.
The Collegiate Church of St. Simon and St. Jude was consecrated on 2 July 1051 by Hermann, Archbishop of Cologne. It was dedicated to saints whose feast coincided with Henry III’s birthday. A collegiate church was served by secular clergy known as canons rather than by monks living under a monastic rule. The foundation produced several important ecclesiastical dignitaries of the empire and was commonly called Goslar Cathedral. It was sold for demolition in 1819.
Imperial Events and Political Conflict
The palace district hosted events involving rulers, popes, bishops, and imperial officials. Henry IV was born there on 11 November 1050. In late summer 1056, Pope Victor II stayed at Goslar for several weeks with Henry III. After Henry’s death at Bodfeld, Victor helped organize the transfer of power to Henry’s widow, Empress Agnes, who acted for the young Henry IV.
At Pentecost in 1063, a dispute over seating precedence between Hezilo, Bishop of Hildesheim, and Widerad, Abbot of Fulda, erupted into a half-day bloodbath inside the collegiate church. The young Henry IV witnessed the violence. In summer 1073, during the Saxon revolt, Henry fled from the palace to the nearby Harzburg. At Christmas 1075, he received Pope Gregory VII’s threat of excommunication there. This confrontation marked the beginning of the Investiture Controversy, the conflict between the papacy and secular rulers over the appointment and authority of church officials.
In 1081 Hermann of Salm, Henry IV’s rival and antiking, was crowned and anointed at the palace. From 1152 to 1188, the complex was both a venue for and an object of the struggle between Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa and Duke Henry the Lion. In July 1219, Frederick II held an Imperial Diet at Goslar and received the Imperial Regalia that Otto IV had kept at the Harzburg. An Imperial Diet was a formal assembly of the ruler and the political estates of the Holy Roman Empire, while the Imperial Regalia were the ceremonial objects representing imperial authority.
Decline, Reuse, and Loss
William of Holland was the last German king to reside at the palace, in 1253. The complex then declined. A fire in 1289 destroyed many buildings, and the newer residential palace was demolished down to its foundations. In 1290, the palace district passed to the town of Goslar.
The surviving hall building later served as a court for the Goslar town bailiff and the Saxon district court, as well as a storage facility. In the mid-sixteenth century, the halls of the Kaiserhaus and the older residential building were used as granaries. St. Ulrich’s Chapel became a prison in 1575, a use that contributed to its preservation.
The Church of Our Lady deteriorated separately. Its towers collapsed in 1672, and the rest of the building fell in 1722. Its stones were then sold as building material. Parts of the collegiate church had begun to collapse by 1331, and one of its towers fell in 1530. By 1802 it stood as a ruin. On 19 July 1819, it was sold for demolition for 1,504 talers.
St. Thomas’s Church began as an eleventh-century burial chapel for servants of the collegiate foundation. When the Bergdorf settlement declined, it became the parish church of the palace district. In July 1527, St. John’s Church, the miners’ hospital, and the remaining buildings of Bergdorf were violently destroyed. Parish rights were subsequently transferred to St. Thomas’s Church.
Restoration and Archaeological Investigation
In 1865, collapsing walls in the Kaiserhaus led Goslar’s council to consider demolition. A state commission instead recommended restoration. Work began on 14 August 1868 under plans by Adalbert Hotzen. His proposal for a symmetrical remodelling, including the demolition of the 1551 storehouse, was not carried out. Restoration resumed in 1873 under revised plans by Fritz Hennecke and Ernst Schulze, with Theodor Unger as construction manager, and was completed in 1879.
Emperor Wilhelm I visited the building site on 15 August 1875, giving the project national importance. The reconstruction went beyond strictly evidence-based restoration and introduced monumental nineteenth-century elements that reflected the national enthusiasm of the period. This mixture of medieval fabric and later interpretation remains an important part of the building’s history, although aspects of the reconstruction are viewed critically.
Archaeologist Uvo Hölscher led investigations in 1913–14 and again in 1922, rediscovering the foundations of the Church of Our Lady. Conservation work around the palace beginning in 2024 exposed the foundations of an angular building with two hall-like rooms. The structure has been attributed to a tenth-century palace and appears to have been enlarged around 1180 into a residential palace with chambers for Frederick Barbarossa. A probably medieval arch in the town wall was also exposed in the palace garden area.
The palace district, Goslar’s Old Town, and the former Rammelsberg mine have formed a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1992, with the property extended in 2010. The designation recognizes their long association with mining and the historical exchange and development of mining technology. The palace is also part of the Harz UNESCO World Heritage Route.
Remains
The palace district occupies an area of about 340 by 180 metres at the foot of Rammelsberg, south of Goslar. A surrounding wall enclosed the Kaiserhaus, the Church of Our Lady, St. Ulrich’s Chapel, the Collegiate Church of St. Simon and St. Jude, residences and service buildings for canons, houses for dependent officials and the imperial entourage, stables, and storerooms. The Kaiserhaus dominates the western side on a north–south axis. The Church of Our Lady stood at right angles to it on the north, St. Ulrich’s Chapel to the south, and the collegiate church opposite on an east–west axis.
The Kaiserhaus and Residential Buildings
The Imperial Hall Building
The Kaiserhaus measures 54 metres in length and 18 metres in depth. It is the largest and best-preserved secular building of eleventh-century Germany. Its central two-storey hall contains two rooms placed one above the other, each measuring 47 metres long and 15 metres wide. Beam ceilings were supported centrally by rows of columns.
The upper room, known as the Summer Hall, is seven metres high. Its closed western wall contains a central throne position, while the eastern side has a range of windows overlooking much of the palace district and the collegiate church. Six large round-arched openings and a strongly arched central section probably led to a balcony, or altan. The central window opened onto a columned balcony flanked by three arched windows on each side. The windows were apparently unglazed. The arrangement opened the hall visually towards the outside and may have supported the requirement that certain judicial proceedings take place outdoors.
The Summer Hall was probably intended for the emperor and his immediate entourage. The lower Winter Hall served lower-ranking courtiers. It contained a warm-air heating system in which two large wood-burning ovens west of the hall sent heated air through a channel. Two main ducts divided into smaller channels inside the room, and covers could be removed from their terminal openings to release the heat. Unlike a Roman hypocaust, this system used channels to warm the room and allowed assemblies to continue in poor weather.
Later Alterations and Domestic Quarters
When the hall collapsed in 1132, it was rebuilt immediately. A full-height cross-wing was inserted at the centre, and a porch was placed in front of the central ground-floor doorway to serve as a balcony for the upper storey. A gable was added to the formerly steep, slate-covered roof. Some windows were made closable, a heating arrangement resembling floor heating was installed, and the basement window arcades were replaced by rectangular openings. Foundation remains at the foot of the southern exterior staircase cannot yet be securely assigned to a particular building phase.
A two-storey residential building adjoined the hall to the north. Its upper floor was probably intended for the imperial family and had direct access to the Summer Hall, with a probable gallery connection to the Church of Our Lady. Under Henry V, a nearly identical second set of living quarters was added at the southern end. Archaeological work has also identified an angular building with two hall-like rooms, attributed to a tenth-century palace and apparently enlarged around 1180 into a residence with chambers for Frederick Barbarossa.
The Imperial Throne
The original imperial throne is exhibited in a lower vaulted room of the Kaiserhaus, while a replica stands in the surviving northern porch of the collegiate church. The throne’s bronze side and back panels carry tendril ornament dating from the second half of the eleventh century. The sandstone barriers around the seat are later, probably from around 1220, and display Romanesque animals and mythical creatures. The throne may have served Henry IV, Rudolf of Swabia, or Hermann of Salm.
Prince Charles of Prussia acquired the throne in the 1840s and installed it at Glienicke Palace near Potsdam. It later passed to the Hohenzollern family and served Wilhelm I as an imperial seat at the opening of the first German Reichstag on 21 March 1871.
Chapels and Collegiate Precinct
St. Ulrich’s Double Chapel
St. Ulrich’s Chapel is a double chapel, a building with two vertically connected sacred spaces. Its lower level has a cross-shaped central structure with four round apses, while the north and south arms contain additional smaller apses. The upper chapel is octagonal and connects with the lower chapel through squinch vaults, which support an upper structure across the angles of a square or polygonal space. Its eastern apse rises above the principal apse of the lower chapel.
A square opening above the crossing connects the two levels. Four central columns in the upper chapel rest above the four inner corners of the lower storey, creating a four-support arrangement. The exterior niches use squinch supports. Their form has been associated with Armenian architectural models, although this is an art-historical interpretation rather than conclusive evidence about the chapel’s builders or design origins.
The upper chapel was reserved for the imperial family and directly adjoined the residential palace to the north. A stair tower between the northern and western arms linked the two levels, and a passage from the tower led towards the later southern residential quarters of the Kaiserhaus. The eastern apse was reconstructed in the nineteenth century.
At the centre of the lower chapel stands a sarcophagus with a mid-thirteenth-century cover sculpture of the life-size, reclining Henry III. The figure rests on a cushion, holds a sceptre in the right hand and a model of a church in the left, and has a dog at its feet. Henry III’s heart is kept inside an octagonal gilded capsule within the sarcophagus. At his request it remained at Goslar and has been preserved in St. Ulrich’s Chapel since 1884.
Church of Our Lady
The Church of Our Lady had a two-storey central square structure measuring nearly 10 metres on each side. Three apses stood at the east, and a western entrance block contained two round towers. The ground floor, entered from the south, served the ordinary palace staff. The upper floor was probably paved with marble, reserved for the imperial family, and directly connected through the western block to the Kaiserhaus. Its foundations lie beneath the path leading to the Kaiserhaus.
The church’s foundations were rediscovered during Hölscher’s investigations in 1913–14 and 1922. The surviving remains therefore preserve the position of the original palace chapel within the larger district, even though the building itself disappeared through collapse and the later removal of its stone.
Collegiate Church and Domburg
The former Collegiate Church of St. Simon and St. Jude was a three-aisled basilica with a transept, three eastern apses, and a western entrance structure with two octagonal towers and an intermediate bell storey. It also had a simple entrance hall, a crypt beneath the choir, and another tower above the crossing. At its consecration, it was the largest Romanesque church east of the Rhine and influenced later northern German churches, including Brunswick Cathedral.
Only the northern porch survives. Added around 1150, it incorporates the earlier north portal as its rear wall. Its facade has two rows of niches containing originally coloured plaster sculptures. The upper row presents the Madonna and Child with chandeliers and angels; the lost original figures were replaced by paintings. The lower row shows Henry III, Simon, Matthias, Jude, and another unidentified imperial figure.
Within the walled collegiate precinct known as the Domburg, curia buildings housed the canons. Other curiae bordered the Kaiserbleek, the square between the collegiate church and the Kaiserhaus, on its northern and southern sides. St. Thomas’s Church stood in the northeastern corner of the Domburg.
Nineteenth-Century Reconstruction and Later Additions
The nineteenth-century work added or altered the arcade linking the Kaiserhaus and St. Ulrich’s Chapel, a stair tower, the exterior staircase before the eastern facade, and basement window openings. It also introduced two replicas of the Brunswick Lions and equestrian statues of Frederick Barbarossa and Wilhelm I. The Wilhelm statue, erected in 1900–01 and inscribed “Wilhelm the Great,” is not historically connected with the medieval palace.
Hermann Wislicenus painted the monumental cycle in the Summer Hall between 1877 and 1890, with further work in the Kaiserhaus continuing until 1897. The paintings present the Hohenzollern Empire as the successor to the medieval Roman-German emperors. The central composition shows Wilhelm I on horseback with Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm, allegorical figures of Lorraine and Alsace, Bismarck laying the foundation stone of the German Empire, German princes including Ludwig II of Bavaria, Wilhelm’s family, and medieval emperors including Frederick Barbarossa.
Other scenes depict the supposed revival of the empire in 1871 through the figure of Sleeping Beauty, Barbarossa emerging from the Kyffhäuser, Charlemagne’s destruction of the Irminsul in 772, Luther before Charles V at Worms in 1521, and the coronation of Henry II and Kunigunde by Pope Benedict VIII in 1014. Further panels show Henry III leading Pope Gregory VI across the Alps in captivity, Henry IV, Barbarossa’s meeting with Henry the Lion at Chiavenna in 1176, Barbarossa at Iconium during the Third Crusade, and Frederick II. The compositions on the long western wall and at the northern and southern ends correspond to the hall’s symmetry.
Henry Moore’s sculpture Goslar Warrior has stood in the palace garden since 1975. The older residential quarters are used for administrative and exhibition purposes. Objects from the palace district, including the Krodo Altar and several choir windows, are held in Goslar Museum.
