Aachen Carnival

Aachen's carnival, organised since the early nineteenth century, shares the 'Alaaf' cry with Cologne and Bonn and culminates in a Rosenmontag Grand Parade of over 100 floats stretching several miles. A distinctive local custom is throwing tulips into the crowd, and the city's Tulip Sunday children's costume parade has run since before the Second World War.

Aachen's first carnival associations were founded in the early nineteenth century, part of the wider wave of organised Rhineland carnival societies that emerged in cities including Cologne, Bonn, Dusseldorf and Mainz during the same period, and the city's carnival culture has stayed closely tied to that regional tradition ever since, sharing the same 'Alaaf' carnival cry used in Cologne and Bonn rather than the different cry favoured further along the Rhine.