We construct several examples of higher-dimensional Calabi--Yau manifolds and prove their modularity.

This paper investigates the modularity of three non-rigid Calabi--Yau threefolds with bad reduction at 11. They are constructed as fibre products of rational elliptic surfaces, involving the modular elliptic surface of level 5. Their middle $\ell$-adic cohomology groups are shown to split into two-dimensional pieces, all but one of which can be interpreted in terms of elliptic curves. The remaining pieces are associated to newforms of weight 4 and level 22 or 55, respectively. For this purpose, we develop a method by Serre to compare the corresponding two-dimensional 2-adic Galois representations with uneven trace. Eventually this method is also applied to a self fibre product of the Hesse-pencil, relating it to a newform of weight 4 and level 27.

We study Calabi--Yau manifolds constructed as double coverings of $\mathbb{P}^3$ branched along an octic surface. We give a list of 87 examples corresponding to arrangements of eight planes defined over $\mathbb{Q}$. The Hodge numbers are computed for all examples. There are 10 rigid Calabi--Yau manifolds and 14 families with $h^{1,2}=1$. The modularity conjecture is verified for all the rigid examples.