Sabre of Charlemagne

The so-called Sabre of Charlemagne (German: Säbel Karls des Großen) is an early sabre of Hungarian (Magyar) type (presumably made in the early 10th century) which has been exceptionally preserved (as opposed to recovered from the archaeological record) as part of the Aachen regalia of the Holy Roman Empire.

[1] According to tradition, Otto III recovered the weapon when he opened Charlemagne's grave in AD 1000.

[2] 19th-century antiquarian scholarship was prepared to accept the weapon's Carolingian age,[3] but the modern estimate, while compatible with its association with Otto III, rules out any direct connection with Charlemagne.

When French troops approached Aachen in 1794 the Imperial regalia located there were taken to the Capuchin abbey at Paderborn, then to Hildesheim in 1798 and finally to Vienna in 1801.

On the orders of Adolf Hitler, the imperial relics were brought to Nuremberg in 1938, where they were displayed in the Katharinenkloster.

Replicas of the Imperial regalia of the Holy Roman Empire in the coronation hall of Aachen Rathaus , with the sabre of Charlemagne on the right
Examination of the Imperial regalia in the Wiener Nationalbank at their return in 1946.