Palace Lofen and the City Rights

Between two shop fronts there is a narrow gate with a crown above it and the name Paleis Lofen. Behind it lies the birthplace of the city, and for centuries nobody knew that any more.

This was the palace where the German emperors stayed when they came to Utrecht, built in the first half of the eleventh century on Roman remains. At Whitsun in 1122 the emperor Henry the Fifth was visiting when a fight broke out at the door between his courtiers and the servants of bishop Godebald. The people of Utrecht took the emperor's side.

Their reward was sealed on the second of June in two charters, signed here inside this palace. A court of their own, exemption from part of the toll, and permission to build a city wall.

The parchment still exists. It lies in a climate-controlled room at the city archive and comes out one day a year, on the city's birthday. The seal of Henry the Fifth hanging from it is damaged.

Of the palace itself nothing remained in sight. Houses were built on top of it and the memory faded, until the arches turned up again in a cellar in the nineteenth century.

We now walk to Dom Square, to a staircase that goes back another thousand years.