I had put together three prospective day trips for our time in and around the Mosel Valley. I presented Drew with the options and he selected going west to Trier and, if we felt like it, on to Luxembourg.
Trier is a crazy place. It's sort of like being in Rome, except it's not at all Italian. In Italy you sort of expect to have Roman sites popping up all over the place. Sure, there are a few sprinkled in Britain; Bath was weird but since the baths were in, well, Bath, it wasn't surprising at all. But this was my first Continental European Roman city that has a ginormous and quintessentially Roman architecture smacking you right in the face. There was a lot of us quoting Eddie Izzard's "Ah, the Romans were here"—just like San Francisco! Aside from that, the city is just plain old, pre-dating the Romans themselves by a thousand years give or take. There aren't many signs of that, though, with the Roman stuff dominating. I imagine its extra-dominant because Trier was one of the Roman capital cities in its day.
We found a parking garage near the Market Square used it to orient us, finding the aptly-named Porta Nigra easily. It's one of those can't-miss-it sort of things. Walking north on the main thoroughfare from the square, bam! Giant Roman gate, as pictured in my previous post. There were multiple gates such as this, but this is the only one still standing and the walls themselves aren't much there anymore either; we saw portions at the amphitheater, which sat right in the middle of the walls, later in the day.
Anyway, the gate's still around because it became a church, and churches tend to survive better than most buildings (under most circumstances, anyway). There isn't much in the way of church-y bits left, though, thanks to Napoleon's intervention. We avoided the (surely authentic) Centurion-led tour and explored on our own, appreciating how well the craftsmanship has stood up over the centuries, particularly since the Romans didn't use any mortar. The views from the gate were also quite lovely; we could see the hills surrounding the town as well as the cathedral, which was our next destination, via the Hauptmarkt (the Market Square).
This had to have been the most pristine and colorful—borderline Disney-esque—square we'd seen so far, which is saying something since we'd been to some pretty cute towns. I think that the larger size of this one served to enhance its cuteness. The H&M was positively darling in its pink building, formerly home to the archbishop, who must be rolling over in his grave. We bought sandwiches and had a people-watching picnic in the square, which seemed to be our lunchtime MO in German towns with cute squares.
After lunch we swung by the cathedral, which is, well, a cathedral, mainly remarkable because it's super old; I think the oldest one in the country. It's nice enough and beautifully preserved/restored, but I enjoyed the nearby Roman basilica more. It was infuriatingly hard to photograph, inside and out, because it's surrounded by buildings (including one silly wedding cake of a building) so you can't really capture its grandeur; the interior is filled with light and bricks. It's positively cavernous and would have been even more impressive when it served as a throne room for Constantine (yes, that Constantine). It's a church now and tastefully done.
From there we headed to Constantine's baths, which were positively labyrinthine. We had so much fun wandering in the maze where the slaves labored to keep what was surely an impressive network of furnaces going. We chose to disregard our guidebook's advice and went to the amphitheater next. It was a bit of a hike outside of town, but well worth it; I'm glad we made the trek. Sure, it's no Colosseum, but because of its relatively diminutive scale you get a much better idea of how it all worked. Plus you really can go almost anywhere in it, including underneath, and we enjoyed playing lions and Christians.
Returning to town proper, we swung by Karl Marx's birthplace, because how could we not? There's something wrong about shopping in the Karl Marx gift shop, but that didn't stop me from buying postcards.
Wrapping up our day in Trier, we decided that Luxembourg City was simply too close to miss at merely 50km away, and fled Germany for a bit.
No comments:
Post a Comment