The Imperial Palace of Goslar is the largest, oldest, and best preserved secular building of the Romanesque world. Begun by Henry III in around 1040, it served for two centuries as a residence and meeting place of the German kings — diets were held here, charters signed, hunts organised in the surrounding Harz forests. The vast Reichssaal hall, with its rebuilt nineteenth-century murals, still gives a sense of imperial scale.
Below the main hall, the palace chapel of St Ulrich holds the heart of Heinrich III in a Romanesque stone sarcophagus, sent home from Italy after his death in 1056. The terrace in front of the building is worth a few minutes for the view across the lower town and out to the Rammelsberg ridge — the imperial planners chose the site deliberately to look directly at the source of their silver wealth.