Central Trier

The big draw in Trier is Roman stuff but the city centre has some classic mediaeval German stuff to see as well.

The Market Area

Follow the street down from the Porta Nigra and you hit the market square. It's the commercial heart of the city, there is still a small area of market stalls but it's also hemmed in by the usual European stores, H&M, McDonalds, etc., that make every city centre just look like every other city centre.

There is still no escaping Roman stuff, though. The market cross, dating back to the 1400's, is actually a Roman column of granite topped by a sundial from the middle ages. I don't know if the local burghers were just being frugal or if reusing someting Roman added an air of legitimacy to it. Just in the background you can see the cathedral and there was a lot of tension between the merchants and the bishops. Both fought over who was the dominant power and maybe planting a Roman, i.e. pagan, monument within sight of the cathedral was part of that.

The other dominant building on the market square was the Steipen. It was the HQ for the market operations and again the merchants made a veiled threat with it. On the lower level are the patrom saints of Trier, above are a pair of knights. The saints are small, the knights are almost double their size and their weapons are clearly out on display. They face the cathedral as well and the message is pretty clear: if you control trade then you control the military.

The bishops responded with their own monument, a fountain topped with Saint Peter and the four virtues. The bottom level was meant to represent the vices, a bunch of little monkeys acting like fools, but there was no mistake these were meant to be the merchants of the market.

In the ultimate middle finger to the bishops, the merchants built their own church for the market: St Gangolf. It's a pretty little mediaeval church down an alley. The choice of patron is an interesting one. Gangolf was a Burgundian noble who prided himself on living a righteous life but while he was off doing his good deeds, his wife was banging the local priest. After being caught out Gangolf forgave both of them but in an act of cowardice the priest ambushed and killed him. Again, a message to the bishops: you think you are so clever but you're just a bunch of pussies.

The Ghetto

I don't really know what the PC word that I'm supposed to use is, but ghetto comes with all the oppressive, negative connotations that are needed to sum up the Judengasse. This tiny alley was the home of Trier's Jews up to the 1400's when they were expelled. It's narrow and the buildings are high. Families were stacked on top of each other. The alley must have stunk, all the smells of life from cooking to shit and piss to death and disease funelled into this little chimney of a street. Even today hipsters can't manage to gentrify it, the few bars that have taken root in the Judengasse are scruffy and rough looking. Strange how in the 21st century te Judengasse is still a run-down borderland in the city centre. The tour groups linger in the archway at the entrance, none of them seem to walk as far down as I had, titty bars and smell of dope not quite fitting in with the quaint tales of mediaeval misery.

Around 400 Jews died during the Nazi-era. Considering that at its peak, in the Middle Ages, Trier only had around 800 Jews then that must have been total devastation of that community. Round the city are the little brass "stumble stones" that are found all over Germany. They bear the names of Jewish people who lost their lives in WW2. This was the first time I'd ever seen them and they do take you by surprise, which I guess is their purpose. You start noticing them and then you start noticing how many there are and how widely scattered. It shows you what a lottery it was. Just simple luck of the draw. You could have been born into a family on one side of the street and been safe or to another family and died a horrific death. It's almost like someone just scattered these stones. If one lands outside your door then you get on the train.

Just to the south of the city centre is the New Synagogue, the first built for a couple of centuries. It's a lovely building but noticeably small which I suppose means Trier's Jewish community is likewise small. But they survived and survived numerous expulsions and pogroms. So much so that the mediaeval Trier dialect forms part of the Yiddish language of eastern Europe.

Marx

Karl Marx is Trier's best known son. Just round the corner from the Porta Nigra is his statue, looking for all the world like Doctor Zaius from Planet of the Apes. Maybe the biggest symbol of Roman power in the city, Marx is set with his back to great city gate, striding away. Maybe he is symbolically walking into the future, maybe he is supposed to be shunning colonial power. I don't know. I like to think that the symbolism is that Marx is shoved down a dead end street where he belongs.

There has not been one single country where Marx's ideas have succeeded without the imposition of extreme state violence. The great icon of freedom from oppression has inspired more actual oppression than any other man in history except for maybe Hitler. People leave flowers on this statue like he is a saint and I'll bet cash money these are dopey middle-class Guardian reader types done well off capitalism and raging property prices who like to bitch about the demons of the system that made them affluent.

His heart was in the right place. The Industrial Revolution really fucked up society and the conditions were horrendous. The city museum has a big exhibit on the genesis of his ideas and they are very seductive. But they don't work. In two hundred years they have never worked. Not once. Instead, they have led the nations that tried them to blast themselves into the fucking Stone Age. Of course, his defenders will argue but that wasn't real Marxism. Sure, two centuries worth of trying and no-one did real Marxism?

Nobody ever put a statue up to anyone that said general affluence and prosperity brings people out of poverty better than anything else yet invented. Instead, idiots are queuing to pay money to see his birthplace.

Liebfraukirche

Next door to the cathedral is the Liebfraukirche. The two sprawl into one another but the Liebfraukirche is treated like a poor relation. The inside is much more austere than the cathedral next door. Damn near minimalist. But the light in it is beautiful. It's full of stained glass and the interior is bathed in blues and reds and greens. I think I liked it more than I liked the cathedral.

The main door has some big symbolic carvings and I have no idea what is going on. Eve has a leafy merkin, St John is next to her with a goblet of snakes. There's a blind woman whose crown has fallen off and she's holding a broken stick. No-one has bothered to tell her which seems un-Christian-like. On the other side, Adam's mate looks like he is flogging a tartan blanket to the happy woman next to him.

Other Stuff

Not in the centre but not far off

The Simeonstift is an old monastery dedicated to St Simeon, the hermet who lived in the ruins of the Porta Nigra afterit fell into disrepair. It's right next to the gate. I am not sure what it is used for now but if you want to buy statues of Marx then the gift shop here is the place for you.

Down a side street is the Frankenturm. I came across it by accident after getting lost. It's in amongst some forgettable buildings like the ex-Jesuit college and an ugly department store/shopping centre. It's a good thing to come across but not really worth searching out.

A walk along the Mosel on an autumn afternoon sounds perfect. It isn't. The river is cut off from the rest of the town by a six-lane highway that leaves it isolated and forgotten. The tents of the homeless line the river bank. The tree-lined path was bleak and lonely and I walked only as far as I needed to so that I could realise it wasn't what I wanted it to be.

In doing so, I missed the final of the three sets of Roman baths. I didn't care by this point, I was Romaned out and one hypocaust goes a long way.

Germany isn't really big on preserving Nazi-era remains so it's surprising that this bomb shelter still exists. Built in 1942 (and never finished) it was meant as a shelter for local government officials. Rather than go underground in a reinforced concrete bunker like any sane person, they decided building a 38m high tower would offer much greater protection during an air raid. The pointy roof was designed so that bombs would just bounce off it. Strangely, it was never used.

Trier was damn near obliterated by air raids. Ironically, it was generally the Roman-era buildings that survived. Most of the mediaeval city was lost. That's pretty sad, you still see the odd Romanesque arch or stone wall built into the modern buildings. Enough to see how well preserved it must have been. Unlike many places, they chose not to rebuild and the town centre is generally a fairly ugly mish mash of post-war replacements.

The oldest pharmacy in continual use is in Trier. The Lowen Apothek goes back to 1241 where a mediaeval chronicler ponders why the fuck pharmacists are paid so much for counting pills and putting jars in paper bags.

St James Way

Trier is yet another stop on the network of greater routes that head towards the Pyrenees and the start of the Camino de Santiago. In mediaeval times the only "recreational" travel that was accessible to most people was to go on pilgrimage. People today have a very reverential idea of what pilgrimage means but I don't doubt for a second that a trip to northern Spain would have been, at the very least, an eye-opener to the buttoned-up north Europeans. In fact, I'm pretty sure it would have been a good three months of boozing and shagging your way west. If you are going to beg for forgiveness then you might as well have some sins to start with.

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