Our next goal, and the major goal for today, is Porta Nigra right next to the City Museum we just visited. It is the most famous attraction in Trier and a highlight in all of their advertising and for good reason. And it also has such an interesting history, starting as a major Roman wall gate and then being transformed into a church for the Simeonstift nearby and then being transformed back into a gate by Napoleon. Because of this history it is asymmetrical now as one of the tower was demolished to make it more churchlike during those years.
It seems even now it is under renovation but only on one side so if we go on the other side we can see it is still as impressive as we remember. Also it is called Porta Nigra, Black Gate, for good reason, the color has darkened significantly over the years due to weathering and age.
And now it is time to use our Roman pass to enter the second free attraction on it, Porta Nigra of course. This time we do enter it, an hour before we demured due to lack of toilets and entered the city museum instead. And now we hope we have more energy to climb up to the top on the circular staircase, no elevator here at least for visitors.
At the first landing we have to catch our breath and to take some photos of the great views. And also to check how far we have to climb, quite a lot it seems.
But first we have to explore this level completely as you can walk around the interior courtyard and see the remains of the former church. Churches in fact there were two of them, the upper church accesible to monks only and the lower church open to the general public.
We can now see that we have at least one more level to climb possible a couple depending if the tower is climbable or not. And we can imagine how the church looked, what we cannot imagine is how Napoleon passed through here and said, destroy the church, restore the gate. It seems quite random really.
There is also a stone basin here which we assume is a baptismal font but may be something else, who knows. There are also views on the other side of the Porta Nigra towards the newer section of the city with a major hotel in the foreground.
We see a few more panels from the church era, there are lots of bishops and other religious figures engraved in the walls.
We climb a bit to another nice view of the downtown area but it still seems we are not high enough to look over the buildings to the Dom. At least the higher we go the fewer people there are, the heat and the climb is getting to the people.
There is still one more floor, at a minimum, to climb but we spend some time exploring this level of Porta Nigra and to see the engravings on the many pillars.
We are now on the top common level but there is one more level in the surviving tower it seems. For the other tower we are on top which is great news as we are getting tired.
Again we take a look from the other side of Porta Nigra, we can now see up into the hills but we still cannot see the university which is something we were hoping for.
And then from the top looking back towards the downtown area we finally are high enough to see the Dom and the beautiful downtown area from a more bird’s eye view. And then after enjoying the view for a while we descend and it is time to find a place to eat before returning back to the AirBnB.
