Trier
UNESCO World Heritage Site: Roman Monuments, Cathedral Of St Peter And Church Of Our Lady In Trier (1986); The Largest Group Of Roman Remains North Of The Alps, In Germany'S Oldest City · Trier, Rhineland-Palatinate
Trier on the Moselle claims to be Germany's oldest city, founded as Augusta Treverorum under Augustus around 16 BC, and by the fourth century it was an imperial residence and one of the largest cities in the Roman west. What survives is the biggest group of Roman buildings north of the Alps: the Porta Nigra city gate, the never-finished Imperial Baths with their walkable underground service passages, the ruined Barbara Baths, an amphitheatre with cellars under the arena floor, a bridge whose piers have carried traffic for roughly 1,850 years, and the Basilica of Constantine, the largest surviving single-room structure of antiquity. Those monuments, the cathedral with its Holy Robe and the Liebfrauenkirche were inscribed together as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1986. The Rheinisches Landesmuseum holds the mosaics and the Neumagen wine ship; Karl Marx was born a few streets away. The honest caveat: this is a working city of roughly 110,000 people, the sites are scattered across it on foot, and several are bare masonry that needs a guide to make sense.
Trier on the Moselle: the Porta Nigra, the Imperial Baths, the amphitheatre, the basilica and the cathedral, in the far west near Luxembourg, Trier, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany
The Roman monuments are individually ticketed and keep seasonal hours: longest in high summer, an hour or two shorter in spring and autumn, shortest from November to February, with last admission about half an hour before closing - confirm. Most open daily, but the underground levels of the Imperial Baths and the amphitheatre cellars close without notice in frost, storm and heavy rain. The cathedral and the Liebfrauenkirche are free and open daily outside services, the cathedral treasury on shorter museum hours. The Rheinisches Landesmuseum closes Mondays, as most German state museums do. The streets, the Roman bridge, the Hauptmarkt and the palace gardens are open at all hours and cost nothing.