Part of the theory that if you can give a name to those who died in the concentration camps, then a little part of them survives, this plaque in the ground commemorates the lives of three people who lived here until they were deported in 1940. It’s located along Wechselstraße and is quite hard to find, but it’s a memory of the real people who once lived and worked here in Trier.
The Roman sites in Trier certainly present a complex history, this is a former baths complex which was never quite finished. It was meant to be Barbaratherman, or Barbara Baths, but when military needs required the Romans to shift to the east, the project got suspended. When it started again the building was instead used as a parade hall.
Then in the medieval period an enterprising local moved himself into the structure and turned it into a house for him and his family. Parts of the site were also turned into a church, which must be an enormous archaeological puzzle. This is why some of the building has remained, although there is a large restoration programme going on now to prevent bits of it collapsing. The restoration programme was so extensive that it closed the entire site off from between 2000 and 2015.
This looks over-restored to me, but was part of Alderburg Castle. The information was in German, so I may have misunderstood, but it looks like that they might recently have in places built walls in front of the Roman walls in an attempt to preserve them better, although that has made it difficult to ascertain what is original and what isn’t.
They’ve built a new observation deck in the corner of the museum, which allows visitors to look out over the site. There’s also a recreation of how the baths might have looked at one time, or would have looked like if they’d finished them.
And a photo from the same location over the rest of the site.
A view over the centre of the baths area.
Part of a small hypocaust.
There was a sign on the site which said to look out for surfaces which were marked with the imprint of wooden planks, which are the original support structures that were placed down here to build the walls. On balance of probability, this is probably one of them, as the wooden planks are visible. I’ll have to find a civil engineer to confirm that….
All of the above photos are of the extensive tunnel network which is below the site, and which I hadn’t realised even existed until near to the end of my visit. There must be getting on for a mile of tunnels down there and it’s easy to get lost, although I started to recognise some of the puddles…. This would be marvellous for kids to explore.
Another site where the staff member at the entrance was really enthusiastic and helpful. I was the only visitor on the site as well, so it was quite eerie down in those tunnels, but as with the amphitheatre earlier in the day, I was very brave.
I’m not entirely sure what I was expecting to find here, but I’m fairly sure that I didn’t expect anything as extensive as what remains. Despite that, most of the site has unfortunately disappeared, the stone was stolen by the church so that they could construct themselves some new buildings, whilst the banks of the seating area were later used to grow grapes on.
Back in Roman days, in around 200AD, the city of Trier was an important northern province. So where there were lots of people, there needed to be entertainment. Like today, where there’s lots of housing then there’s suddenly a demand for a Greggs. So this amphitheater was constructed, so that the locals could watch gladiators kill animals, as well as themselves, with other productions also taking place.
This is taken from the top of the former seating area down onto the modern day ticket desk. To the left, within the grassed area, is a Roman pavement, although this has been moved to the site from somewhere else nearby. On the right is what was once the city wall, which was incorporated into the structure of the amphitheatre. The passages either side of the main path are the vomitoriums, more on which in a moment…
And here’s the Roman pavement mentioned above, complete with grooves.
The audience would have come in from either end, not through the obvious main track into the centre, but through the passages either side of it. These were known as vomitoriums, meaning “to spew out” in Latin, but in the original sense rather than the modern day one.
The vomitoriums are either side of this main pathway.
And now underneath the centre of the auditorium, where wooden structures (some of which are still there) would lift animals and stage equipment up as required. It’s very wet down there, but there are paths which have been created to walk on.
And another photo of under the main arena. When this site was uncovered a lot of lead sheets were found here which had curses written on them. They were thrown here by people because this was known to be an area where people had met a sticky and grisly end, so it was thought that the lead texts would have more effect in such a miserable environment.
These rooms are back on ground level and there are the original cells, or cages, that the gladiators or animals would have been kept in.
I was the only person on the site, bar the man in the ticket office, and it was a little unnerving to wander into all of these dark and wet rooms. I was, of course, very brave.
Much of what is there today only survived because it got buried over time, got repurposed or was simply too difficult to carry away. Above is a photo from over a century ago, showing how the site had fallen into disrepair. Some of the original Roman wall plaster remains because part of the site was used as cellars for many centuries.
This is one of the areas of the amphitheater which didn’t get removed over the centuries, just because it was too well built. This is heavily repaired though, and I personally think it’s been over-repaired as it’s too hard to tell what is new and what is old. There are some photos around the site of what it used to look like and I suspect now they’d have used modern brick to differentiate old from new.
Overall, this was a marvellous site with plenty still in place, although perhaps they needed a little internal museum area to give some background to the whole location.
I visited the Porta Nigra yesterday, the former Roman gate which was later turned into a church. As it was then repurposed in the early nineteenth century, it has become an historically confusing building. This was especially so as the former entry level for the church is now the first floor, but I was pleased to see this model in the Landesmuseum which made everything make more sense.
This is looking from what is now the main street of Trier, so the spire is on the left of the above photo that I took yesterday.
And this is looking from what would have been outside the city gate, with the former entrance of the gate blocked off.
If I’m in a city for any length of time I try and visit the top rated burger restaurant, and pizza restaurant if I get chance, as they’re usually exciting and innovative. In Trier at the moment, that honour appears to fall to Burgeramt (by honour I mean that they’re the top rated burger restaurant, not the honour that I’m visiting).
There’s a modern feel to the interior, clean, contemporary and interesting.
I’ve seen this in a few UK pubs, it’s quite an on-trend drink in the UK, but it is more common in Germany, which isn’t surprising since it is German….
I went for the basic chicken burger and chips and it was well presented, although the restaurant needs new crockery since it was quite chipped. The chips weren’t particularly exciting, under-salted and not very interesting, likely cooked in vegetable oil as well since they hadn’t picked up the taste of anything.
However, the burger was excellent, even though I had only ordered the basic chicken burger. The only exception to that was that the tomato was too mushy and lacking in flavour, they’d have been better off without using it. I have no idea what the onion was they used, it had an unusually sweet taste which was rather agreeable. The chicken burger itself was breaded, with the exterior being crispy, but the meat was tender, moist and full of flavour. The roll was of a decent quality and the sauce added a little edge without being too rich.
Overall it was all absolutely fine as a combined taste, although I did feel something needed doing with those chips. The service was impeccable, it’s counter service to order but the staff bring over the food, and the staff member was engaging and helpful when I ordered. Another limitation with the restaurant is that it’s small, so I got there when lunch started, just so I was able to get a table and I saw others come in and look a little forlorn at the lack of seating options.
The market cross is in the centre of Trier’s market square and it has been in and around this location since 958. The original cross has now been moved to the city’s museum, so the current one is a little more modern, which a date of 1724 on it from when it was renovated.
The pillar the cross stands on is an old Roman column, with holes at the base where it was used in the middle ages as a pillory.
I know that posts about McDonald’s aren’t particularly exciting, and it’s not exactly authentic local cuisine. But, as with Bremen, a visit to a German McDonald’s gets a mention as they sell the McRib, the only country where this delicacy is on the permanent menu.
It’s never that well presented, but as I mentioned before, it’s all about the taste.
I walked through this Roman gate last year and was tempted to go in, but time was too tight…. So, this time, it was the first place that I went. Actually, it was the second as I want to go to McDonald’s for a McRib (they’re the only country that offers them on the permanent menu, I’ll post about that separately), but this was the first historic place.
Looking down onto the ticket hall.
This building was originally a Roman gate and it was constructed in around the period 160-200AD. The above photo is a reconstruction of what the view out of the window might have looked like. All in all, this was an impressive gateway, it’s also the largest Roman gate still standing north of the Alps.
The stonework on the floor marks the original line of the Roman road, where it formerly connected to the main street. The modern street line bypasses the gate, since it’s not really wide enough to have let the volume of carriages and cars through which has been necessary over the last couple of centuries.
After the Romans left, the locals kept pinching bits of the gate, which wasn’t ideal. In the Middle Ages some of the locals would pinch the iron clamps between the blocks of stones and sometimes they just carted off the stone itself to use in their own building efforts.
The stone was originally white as it’s sandstone, but wear and tear on the gate over time led to it being called Porta Nigra, or the Black Gate. Modern air pollution isn’t helping the situation either, although there was a large conservation effort in the early 1970s which helped, and there’s probably a need for another now.
The authorities never decided to demolish the gate, they thought that they’d keep it. This was partly, but not entirely, down to a hermit deciding that he’d like to live in the gate. I can think of worse places, although he picked a rather miserable bit of the structure, the ground floor room in the photo above.
The hermit who had chosen to live in the building was Simeon and when he died the local Bishop, who was known as Poppo, decreed that the gate should become a church. This was a marvellous decision, as it ensured that the building wasn’t demolished and it could continue in use. The photo above is taken looking inwards and the former roof line of the vaulted ceiling of the church can still be seen.
The building has four levels, the ground floor (obviously), then the floor above which was used for public worship when it was a church, and then two upper floors which were used by the monks. Above is a photo of the top floor where the vaulted ceiling of the chapter house was once located. There also used to be a spire above here, but this was later removed.
What is now the first floor of the building was also the entrance, with banked up earth leading people up to former entrance doors such as this one.
I think this is where the organ used to be in the church. On which point, most of this structure is now open to the elements, even though it is mostly roofed over. None of the windows have glass in and it does all feel like it’s deteriorating, especially as in this room there’s dripping water from above.
The interior of a former chapel.
Visitors can’t walk around here, it’s the former gallery which runs behind the chancel.
An old tablet from the church, one of the few things which has any form of protection over it. There’s quite a lot of modern graffiti in the stone around the structure as well which isn’t a particularly pleasant look, although I suppose it will in time become part of the building’s history.
Another photo looking inwards towards what would have been the interior of the gate. The structure remained as a church until Napoleon came along and decided that he wanted to occupy Trier and he suppressed it and brought it into state control. He started to make efforts to restore it to a Roman gate and that’s sort of what the situation is today. The building has been used for various purposes over the last two centuries, but it is now likely to permanently remain as a museum.
I initially walked around this structure moaning (only to myself) about the lack of information on it. However, I then discovered that the friendly staff member had handed me a small foldout explanation of the site, so I had to walk around it all again to get a better context of what it was all about. A fascinating building and I liked how a church had been incorporated into the former gate.
Since I’m back in Germany, it seemed a very good idea to partake in one of their best national dishes. So, I came to Braterei Betz to have a currywurst with pomme frites.
The service was friendly and prompt, with the sausage being covered in a spicy sauce and the chips had a dollop of ketchup on them. It might not be the most glamorous of dishes, but it’s cheap (around £4) and nutritious. Actually, it’s probably not very nutritious, but it tastes decent, so that’ll do me.
I came to Trier in June 2018 during a four hour stopover between Flixbus coaches. I saw how many Roman museums there were here so thought it’d be better to come back and visit them all properly, rather than just quickly go round one or two. So, seven months later, I’m back in the beautiful German city of Trier.
