In a forested vale between the Maas and Rhine Rivers and among crumbling ruins of a Roman bath town, Charlemagne founded the capital of his new Empire, Aachen. Around it emerged cities built on trade and the arts. Cologne, Maastricht, Liege, and others formed a brilliant cultural light for the new Kingdom. As the Empire aged and faded into irrelevance, so did the Rhine-Maas region, a victim of shifting trade routes and wartime devastation. However, Lower Rhine and the Mosan Valley had a critical advantage just beneath the surface: enormous quantities of iron, coal, and people. Nearly a thousand years after the Pope crowned Charlemagne in Aachen, both regions emerged as the industrial heartland of a new Europe. Today, the dichotomy of their soaring Romanesque cathedrals and endless industrial landscapes adds to the unique local identities of lands between the Rhine and Maas.
