Augusta Treverorum

Start with the stone under your hand. It is rough, dark sandstone, cool even in summer, and blackened by centuries of weather and soot. Listen for a moment. Traffic hums. Bicycles click past. Somewhere a church bell sounds. And yet the blocks around you were cut and stacked by Roman builders. You are standing inside Augusta Treverorum, the Roman city that became Trier. It is one of the oldest cities in Germany, and much of it still stands in plain sight.

The name has two parts. Augusta honours the emperor Augustus, who ruled when the Romans founded the town about two thousand years ago. Treverorum refers to the Treveri, the local people who lived in this valley before Rome arrived. Ancient writers described them as a Celtic people with Germanic ties, and they were known for their horsemen. So the city's name joins the conqueror and the conquered. The Romans built their grid of streets here, beside a good crossing of the Moselle River.

That river is the reason for everything. The Moselle runs north toward the Rhine, and it gave the Romans a road for soldiers, grain and wine. The Romans built a bridge here, and that choice shaped the town. Today the Roman Bridge still carries traffic across the water. The arches above were rebuilt in later centuries, but some of the stone piers below the waterline go back to Roman times. Many people call it the oldest bridge in Germany. Most drivers cross it without knowing.

The city grew rich. By the late third century, the empire faced crisis on many fronts, and emperors needed a base close to the Rhine frontier. Trier became that base. For a time it served as an imperial residence and a capital for the western provinces. Constantine the Great lived here before he moved east and gave his name to Constantinople. For some decades, this river town counted among the most important cities in the Roman world, with courts, mints and palaces.

The most famous survivor is the Porta Nigra, the Black Gate. It was built in the late second century as part of the city wall. Look closely at the joints between the blocks. There is no mortar. The Romans held the stones together with iron clamps. In the Middle Ages, people chiselled out much of that iron to reuse it, and you can still see the holes they left behind. The dark colour came later, from weather and pollution over many centuries.

Here is a surprise. The gate survived because it became a church. In the eleventh century, a Greek monk named Simeon lived as a hermit inside one of its towers. After his death he was declared a saint, and the gate was turned into a church in his honour. Without that change, the stone would likely have been taken for other buildings, as happened to most Roman walls. In the early nineteenth century, under Napoleon, most of the church additions were removed.

Walk south and you reach the Aula Palatina, also called the Basilica of Constantine. From outside it looks like a vast brick box. Inside, it is one enormous hall with no columns to hold up the roof. It is the largest surviving single-room building from Roman times. This was the throne hall of the palace. Here, the emperor or his officials received visitors. The room was designed to make a person feel small... and it still does.

The building had a hard life. It was damaged in late antiquity, used as part of a later palace, and badly burned in the Second World War. What you see today is partly a careful postwar rebuilding. Since the nineteenth century, it has served as a Protestant church. Notice the plain brick walls. In Roman times, they were covered with marble and plaster, and the floors were heated from below. The bare surfaces you see now were never meant to be seen.

Not far away are the Imperial Baths. These were planned on a huge scale in the time of Constantine, with hot rooms, cold pools and service tunnels. But there is a twist. Historians believe the baths were never finished as baths. Plans changed, and the complex was later rebuilt for another purpose, possibly as a military barracks or an exercise ground. Today you can walk through the underground passages where slaves once carried fuel. They are dim, cool and quiet, and they show the work behind Roman comfort.

The city had older baths too. The Barbara Baths, down near the river, were among the largest public baths in the Roman Empire. Little rises above ground today, but the foundations show their size. On the edge of the old town, the amphitheatre is built into the slope of a hill. It held thousands of spectators for games and animal fights. Stand on the arena floor and look up at the grassy banks. Below you are the cellars where animals and machinery waited.

Even the cathedral has Roman roots. Trier Cathedral stands on the site of a large church complex from the fourth century, and parts of the Roman brick core remain inside the later walls. Next to it is the Church of Our Lady, one of the earliest Gothic churches in Germany. Together with the Roman monuments, these buildings form a UNESCO World Heritage Site, listed in 1986. Few places show the move from Roman temples to Christian churches so clearly, on the same ground.

If you want to see the smaller side of Roman life, visit the Rhenish State Museum in town. It holds mosaics, tombstones and everyday objects found beneath the streets. One well known piece is a stone carving of a Roman ship loaded with wine barrels. It reminds us that wine has grown on these valley slopes for a very long time. The museum also displays a large hoard of Roman gold coins found in the city. These objects give names and faces to the ruins.

Now look around you again. A Roman street grid still guides parts of the modern town. Shops sit on top of buried walls. Cafés serve local Moselle wine a short walk from a Roman gate. As you move on, watch the ground and the lower courses of old buildings. Look for reused Roman blocks, brick bands, and stones with odd holes. The ancient city did not disappear. It simply became the foundation for everything that followed... and you are walking on it now.