Proserpina sarcophagus

On a chariot steered by a winged divinity and drawn by dragons, Demeter, Persephone's mother, follows the baggage with torches in her hands.

The sarcophagus was made in the first quarter of the 3rd century AD in a workshop in the city of Rome, from carrara marble.

Nevertheless, it has been assumed that this sarcophagus could have been found among "the columns and the marble" that Charlemagne had brought from Rome and Ravenna for the building for his Palatine chapel, according to Einhard's Vita Karoli Magni (ch.26).

[2] The reason why someone would have selected a sarcophagus with "heathen" motifs for the burial of a Christian emperor could lie in a Christian interpretation of the Persephone story: the fact that later in the myth Ceres succeeds in bringing Persephone up by her request that her daughter be allowed to return to the Earth for two thirds of the year was perhaps interpreted as a metaphor for the resurrection of Jesus.

In 1794, Napoleon Bonaparte had the sarcophagus brought to Paris together with the ancient columns of the cathedral, but in 1815 it returned to Aachen again and was installed in the Nikolauskapelle.