← Back to the mapThe Roman city gate Porta Nigra in Trier, Germany
Modern photograph of the Porta Nigra, Trier · Wikimedia Commons

Trier

Gallia Belgica · Roman province·Germany·Founded 16 BCE by Augustus

Augusta Treverorum, Roman capital of northern Gaul. Later imperial residence and one of the empire's biggest cities. In 117 CE, a booming provincial capital.

A living German city of around 106,000; its Roman monuments, including the Porta Nigra, baths, and bridge, form a UNESCO World Heritage Site standing throughout the modern town.

Excavation history

1845
Ch. W. Schmidt — Conducted the first survey of the Kaiserthermen (Imperial Baths) in 1845.
1912-1920
Daniel Krencker — A major structural investigation definitively identified the Kaiserthermen structure as a Roman bath complex.
2017
Rheinisches Landesmuseum Trier (dendrochronology team) — Archaeologists dug a shaft beside the Porta Nigra and used tree-ring dating on recovered wood to date the gate's construction to around 170 CE.

Notable finds

Neumagen Wine Ship
Carved around 220 CE for a wine merchant's tomb at Neumagen on the Moselle, this sandstone relief shows a cargo boat loaded with four barrels and rowed by eight straining oarsmen, proof of just how much wine already moved along this river.
Rheinisches Landesmuseum Trier
Neumagen School Relief
Neumagen School Relief
A wealthy Treveran father who could afford a Greek tutor for his three sons had this scene carved into the family's funerary monument around 180-185 CE, the pupils reading from open scrolls and wax tablets exactly as Roman schoolrooms are described in surviving texts.
Rheinisches Landesmuseum Trier
Trier Gold Hoard
A construction crew hit this buried treasure in 1993: 2,650 gold aurei weighing 18.5 kilograms, hidden around 196 CE but spanning coins struck under emperors going back to Nero — the largest Roman gold hoard ever recovered.
Rheinisches Landesmuseum Trier
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