Paderborn Audioguides

Paderborn takes its name from the Pader, reputedly the shortest river in Germany at just four kilometres, which springs from over 200 sources hidden beneath the city's cathedral before flowing to join the Lippe. In 777, Charlemagne built a palace near these springs, and in 799 Pope Leo III came here to meet him, a meeting that paved the way for the coronation of Charlemagne as Holy Roman Emperor a year later in Rome. The Kaiserpfalz, the reconstructed imperial palace, stands today beside the cathedral, and the LWL-Museum inside it is one of the finest places in Germany to understand the Carolingian world that shaped medieval Europe.

The cathedral itself is a layered architectural document spanning Romanesque, Gothic, and baroque additions, with a famous Three-Hares Window in the choir whose three interlocking hares share three ears between them, a motif also found in English medieval churches and Tibetan Buddhist temples, with no convincing explanation for the coincidence.

Paderborn is also home to the Heinz Nixdorf MuseumsForum, the world's largest computer museum, which traces five thousand years of information technology from Sumerian clay tablets to silicon chips. The Libori festival in late July, celebrating the city's patron saint, is one of the oldest folk festivals in Westphalia, drawing enormous crowds to the streets around the cathedral.