Trier

Porta Nigra

Kathy arranged a trip to Trier for my birthday.   Trier is Germany's oldest city built by the Romans, no later than 17 b.c.  The city gate, called Porta Nigra, was built between 186 and 200 a.d.  It is the largest Roman city gate north of the Alps still in existence.  Although the stone from the other city gates was reused for other projects in the middle ages, the Porta Nigra was converted into a church, and so it was protected from scavenging.

Constantine Basilica

Roman Bath

In the year 275, the city was destroyed in an invasion by the Alamanni (a Germanic tribe).  But it became a capital of the Roman Empire during the tetrarchy, when the father of the future emperor Constantine the Great became the Caesar of the west  in 293 and then Augustus in 305.  (The other three capitals were Izmit in Turkey, Sremska Mitrovica in Serbia, and Milan in Italy.)  Around 310 a.d., the Constantine Basilica was built.  It was an elaborate throne hall with colorful marble inlay, golden mosaics, and statues, along with wall and floor heating.  The Germanic Franks stripped it in the 5th century, but it is still the largest surviving single-room structure (without columns) from Roman times (220 feet long, 90 feet wide and 98 feet high). The eastern wall was partly demolished in the 17th century, when it was integrated into the newly-built prince-bishop's palace. Napoleon turned it into an army barracks, and it had to be restored after bomb damage in 1944   Today it is a church and nearly empty inside, but the size is impressive, and it became a World Heritage Site in 1986.

Around the same time, the Imperial Baths were built.  They were the largest baths in the Empire at the time of construction, and the archeology site covers the entire complex.  You can walk through the labyrinth of underground tunnels that the servants used to keep the air (for heating floors and walls) and water hot and flowing.

West End of the Cathedral of Trier

Following the conversion of Constantine the Great in 337 a.d., the Bishop Maximin of Trier coordinated the construction of the largest collection of ecclesiastical structures in the West outside Rome.  A Christian cathedral hadn't been built before, so the Romans based theirs on four basilicas.  The north-east basilica survives as the cathedral., the south-east basilica as the Church of our lady, the north-west is the open square in front of the cathedral. The south-west basilica was built over the palace of Constantine's mother, Saint Helena.  Today the information center for the cathedral is on the site.  The north-east basilica was built around four monolithic granite columns quarried from the Odenwald, and their transport to Trier is still a wonder.   The Franks burned the cathedral down at the end of the 4th century, and only one of the beautiful columns survived the fire. (Pieces are lying in front of the cathedral for kids to play on.)  The others were replaced in the 6th century by 2nd-century columns. (Another wonder.)  The Normans destroyed it again in 882. It was reconstructed, and the east and west (see picture) ends of the cathedral were added in the Romanesque style by the Holy Roman emperors of the Germanic Salian dynasty (who also built the fantastic Romanesque cathedral in Speyer) during the 11th and 12th centuries. The Holy Roman Emperors had nothing to do with the Roman emperors of Rome, though. 
On May 1, 1196, Archbishop Johann I of Trier consecrated an altar which contained the Holy Tunic of Jesus (you know, the one that the soldiers who crucified Jesus did not divide after crucifying him, but cast lots to determine who would keep it because it was woven in one piece, without seam.)  According to legend, St. Helena brought the Holy Tunic to Trier, along with other reliquaries like pieces of the true cross.  In 1512, during an Imperial Diet the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I demanded to see the Holy Tunic.  The people of Trier heard about that and demanded to see it also. This was the first pilgrimage, and the most recent pilgrimage took place this spring on the 500th anniversary of the first.

The grandsons of Charlemagne divided his empire into three parts in 843, and Trier was part of Lothar's kingdom (Lotharingia, what is called Lorraine today). After the death of  his son Lothair II, Trier became part of the East Frankish Empire (later called Germany) in 870 as a result of the Treaty of Meerssen between the two surviving sons of Louis the Pious (who was the son of Charlemagne).  The Archbishop of Trier was the chancellor of Burgundy (the region of another Germanic tribe that features in the Niebelungenlied), which made him one of the seven Electors of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. This made the archbishops of Trier extremely powerful rulers in the middle ages. The archbishop Balduin von Luxemburg had his great nephew Karl IV crowned Holy Roman Emperor in 1346.  (It's good to have powerful relatives. For those of you who have visited Prague with me, this is the Holy Roman Emperor who built up the city so beautifully.)

Church of Our Lady from the north-west

The Church of Our Lady is the oldest Gothic church in Germany.  It is on the site of the south-east basilica from the time of Constantine the Great.  A double-church had been on the site, but Archbishop Theoderich von Wied  began construction of a Gothic church  around 1230 by master builders and artists from what is today the Lorraine region of France, which is nearby. This led to the construction of the earliest example of Germanic-Gothic architecture. It is also a rare example of a Gothic church with a cruciform floor plan where the legs of the cross have equal lengths (which is more common in Greek churches), if you don't count the apse on the east end (the top side in the drawing of the floor plan).  The church was completed in 1262.  A tall spire typical of Germanic-Gothic architecture was constructed in 1492 at the crossing of the nave and the transepts.  Because of its technology and craftsmanship, it was declared an artwork of Daedalus (the legendary master-builder on Crete who created the Labyrinth in which the Minotaur was kept). Unfortunately, it was destroyed in a storm in 1631, and replaced with a hip roof.
During the occupation by Napoleon, the organization of the church was separated from the cathedral, and the passage way was torn down.  The common lobby of the church and cathedral was walled off. 

Floor plan of the Church of Our Lady

But in 1959, for the Pilgrimage of the Holy Tunic of Jesus, the passage was reopened, and today the church and cathedral can be used together again. Legend has it that during a visit by Napoleon, the Major of Trier convinced Napoleon not to tear down the church by saying "Sire, you wouldn't want to tear down the work of a French architect."  Napoleon fell for it, and the Church of Our Lady was spared.  Unfortunately, the nearby Church of St. Lawrence, which was attached to the Basilica of Constantine, was torn down.  So today the Church of Our Lady has "and St. Lawrence" added to its name.  

Ceiling Fresco from Palace of Helena

The museums in Trier are great.  We spent nearly a full day at the Rheinisches Landesmuseum, which is as good as the Roman museum in Cologne.  We saw exhibits on the Kelts, grave stones of the Romans, and beautiful mosaics recovered from the luxurious Roman houses of Trier.
The Museum of the Diocese of Trier has a ceiling fresco from the imperial palace of St. Helena (Constantine's mother), over which Bishop Maximin built the south-west basilica of the first cathedral in the 3rd century. The fresco was rediscovered in 1945, which I find amazing, because the fresco was simply a white layer in the vertical slice of earth that was revealed during the excavation.  A video of its recovery showed the incredible excavation and reconstruction.  More than 70,000 pieces were painstakingly reassembled.  The effort took decades, but the result is beautiful.
We didn't make it to the Karl Marx house.  We'll have to see that next time.
We ate really well.  The most interesting meal was at "Zum Domstein", where we had a 3-course meal prepared according to an ancient Roman cookbook. It started with a drink called Mulsum, which is made from a dry white wine with honey and spices added.  (There is a definite licorice smell (from anise) that isn't very noticeable in the taste.)  I had a thick barley soup spiced with fennel followed by a plate of sausages (made with pine nuts) and green beans cooked with yellow mustard seeds.  Then came artichoke hearts in an unusual (but delicious) white sauce with egg in it.  The main course was ham with figs for me and lamb with onions in a kind of a sweet sauce for Kathy.  Dessert was a delicious custard with pears. The Romans used honey in everything!
I didn't try any of the beer, because the Moselle River Valley is wine country, so I tried the wine and Federweisser (a young, sweet wine) at a wine stand in the beautiful market square. Everytime we walked through the market square, that wine stand was full of people enoying the young wine. Other Mosel wines were available, too, of course.
It was fun to see the local dialect represented on postcards and restaurant menues. For Kathy, it is a challenge to decipher the words into words we recognize in Hochdeutsch (standard German). It can't be compared to the Frankish dialect where we live.

In the Rhein Landesmuseum, the history of the region is detailed from the prehistoric peoples to the Celts to the Romans to the Franks. We are fascinated by that ancient history and how it influences the present. The area where we live in southern Germany was dominated by Germanic tribes, but Trier, being west of the Rhine, close to France, was dominated by the Celts, also known to Julius Caesar as the Gauls. The Romans regarded both groups as barbarians, but the Celts/Gauls were more tractable in that, after they were subdued, they took up Roman habits and dress and industry. Trier was part of Gallia Belgica.

The Celts, seem to have been the losers in the context of European civilization. There is evidence that they were the earliest Indo-European speaking peoples to inhabit the continent. It was good to be a Celt in the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC when they were feared mercenaries and marauders. Eventually, however, they were overrun by the Germanic tribes in Germany (possibly causing migration to Ireland, Britain and Scotland) and by the Romans in France and Spain (resulting in more migration to those remote islands). Finally the Celts were a subject people in most places where any of them survived.

Trier became the second capital and imperial residence after Rome and a seat of the early Christianity "encouraged" by Constantine. 2000 years of history, and some of it is still visible, which is unique in Germany. Those uncivilizable Germanic tribes ruined everything when they overran the Empire first around 270 AD then for good around 450 AD.


So why do we find this all so fascinating? For one thing, it's the start of what we recognize as civilization in the West. The Roman Empire influenced our culture pervasively. To us as modern people, it is continually amazing that they could accomplish such feats of engineering as bringing water into the houses and taking sewage away. The baths are monumental structures, all for the purposes of getting clean, but they also served as public meeting places. But should it be so amazing to us, just because it resembles our own cultural ideals (of cleanliness and orderliness and civic order) and accomplishments? The technology is amazing to us today, because "even back then", they could achieve so many technical accomplishments. It should not be amazing. The humans in Rome were not ignorant and primitive just because they lived 2000 years ago.

The thing that makes it so amazing is that all that technology and humanistic world view was lost in the Dark Ages and Middle Ages, and it took Western civilization centuries to regain it. Think of what could have happened if the tribes who overran the empire decided to maintain the technology and not just trash it to use for building materials! There would have been a continuity of technology, and maybe the human race would be more advanced technologically than it is. Instead, western civilization took a detour into superstition and enforced ignorance, the philosophy of living was focussed on the hereafter to the exclusion of new ideas from foreign civilizations (specifically the Muslim caliphates, who recovered the knowledge of the Greeks and Romans and made their own progress), just because they didn't conform to the one accepted world view of the Church, for which everything worth knowing was contained in a very few literary sources.  This limited scope of knowledge was not examined for its quality and its validity was not questioned. Independent thought and empirical evidence were suppressed.

It really makes me stop and think about whether Constantine's introduction of Christianity as a state religion was the best thing for the centuries that followed. It ensured the survival of this former Palestinian cult because it unified the movement under a self-proclaimed orthodox body of bishops. Christianity was then spread by ambitious and persistent missionaries among the Germanic tribes. Once the Germanic tribes adopted it, they forced everyone on the European continent to become Christian and consolidated their power with it. The authority of the Church as institution in the post-Roman world and all that that implied sprang from this.

In Trier this whole process is visible in the ruins and surviving structures.