Trip to Trier, Germany

As we visited last time our friend in Ramstein, we happened to have a trip in Trier, Germany. I wanted to share with you a short history of Germany's oldest city. That was really a great trip. I also attached here some photos for you to enjoy viewing.

Steipe, Trier

Fachwerkhaueser, Trier

Madonna Altar in Trier's cathedral

Trier Cathedral

Market Square, Trier

variety of sausages in a Meat store in Trier

historical Porta Nigra

the big foot near Porta Nigra..another foot is found near the Bahnhof (train station)

"Trier stood one thousand and three hundred years before Rome." An inscription on the "Red House" on the main market makes this claim. Naturally it is a Medieval invention, but the statement has a historical background. Indeed, there were settlements in the Trier valley as early as the third century B.C. and Trier was the first city north of the Alps which rightly bore the designation city.

Augusta Treverorum, later Trier, was founded around 16 B.C. by the Romans under Emperor Augustus near a tribal sanctuary of the Celtic Treveri. Towards the end of the third century A.D., Emperor Diocleatian made Trier now called Treviri, a Roman imperial residence and capital of the West Roman Empire. At about the same time, Trier developed into a centre of early Christianity. Conquered in the 5th Century by the Franks, Trier was seeded to the East Frankish/German Empire when the Carolingian Empire was divided in 870. In 958, the Market Cross was erected, making the present day Main Market the centre of the Medieval City.

In the 14th Century are Archbishops became Electoral Princes of the Holy Roman Empire. They made Trier the capital of their Electoral State, a city which experienced great flowering and profound decline up to the dissolution of the Empire at the turn of the 18th to the 19th century. Trier was briefly annexed to France and became a part of Prussia in 1815. After 1945 it became a part of the state of Rhineland/Palatinate in the Federal Republic of Germany.

TRIER TODAY

Trier is a Bishop's seat, a cultural, traffic and economic hub of the state; it is a University City with a harbor on the Mosele water way, site of well-known industrial companies, a wine cultivation and wine trading centre, a shopping, tourist and conference city. Trier has around 100,000 inhabitants.