The last major visit today and the last remaining item on our Roman Pass is the Rheinisches Landesmuseum Trier (Rhineland State Museum) one of the most famous museums with Roman artifacts in Germany. The building was built at the end of the 19th century specifically to house the museum and it looks suitably impressive and in we go to explore the extensive collection.
There is a specific order of visit and we start as recommended with the lowest below-ground level that houses the Prehistory section. It starts, reasonably enough, with the hunters that were roaming Europe hunting and surviving on animals, most of which are long since extinct.
Next section shows the switch from hunters to gatherers, showing what was cultivated and how the early communities survived in this region.
Then as the population grew the villages also grew and of course there was also fighting but also lots of hunting to supplement what they were growing.
Next section is already Bronze Age with some interesting exhibits including showing how a mineral water spring was sprouting from a tree log. It sounds incredible but we have actually seen this once in real life in Romania so it does not sound that far fetched to us.
Here are also the first gold objects, jewelry of course and they could be used even now and no one would bat an eye. And of course the first swords and other bronze weapons.
Then we get in the Iron Age with even more impressive swords, some bows, nails and a lot of bronze objects. Overall it is quite interesting to see what was found in this relatively small area.
Even more interesting is that there is a map showing where a lot of tombs were found around Trier and then there are some exhibits showing photo of the tomb as it is now and what was found in it. Quite interesting to us.
And then the focus shifts to the Celtic Treveri tribe that occupied the area right before the Roman conquest. Their domain occupied Luxembourg and parts of Belgium and obviously Germany. While initially the most important city was located in Luxembourg during Roman times Augusta Treverorum (Trier) become by far most important.
The tribe had a checkered history with Rome including leading a couple of revolts but then they also provided Rome with some of its most famous cavalry. We especially like to see how Celtic walls (Murus Gallicum) were constructed, it seems a relatively easy way to do it using just wood and stone but it actually is quite complicated.
At this point we are getting quite hungry and start looking for the cafe so we decide to move faster. That is not possible however because we reach the most famous part of the museum, the Road of Tombs which exhibits multiple grave memorials found near Neumagen-Dhron.
These are some some very ornate grave memorials and they are really special and between them is a copy of the Igeler Saule, another part of the Unesco World Heritage Site, we really want to see tomorrow (and spoiler we will fail).
Ok, now that we passed the Road of Tombs can we go faster to find the cafe? Nope, now we are in the mosaic section and of course it captures our attention as the mosaics are spectacular.
Some of these mosaics are quite famous like the Monnus mosaic dating from the late 3rd to early 4th century CE with literary figures like poets Virgil and Hesiod. In the end we decide we will return here and continue on looking for the cafe.
The cafe is accessed via a side door and can actually be accessed also from the outside. As such we are not sure what prevents someone to just enter the museum via the cafe for free but we didn’t notice anyone doing it. We buy some typical berry juice and a couple sweets that should tide us over till the evening. And then we return back to the Road of Tombs to take a closer look at the many funeral memorials.
As usual all human sculptures seem to not have faces or noses someone always destroyed them before being discovered at some point. The bears and wild pigs have no such problem, they hated only human faces.
Next is the headless statue gallery, headless for the larger stone statues at least. There are lots of beautiful statues here but we like the collection of small statuettes that were likely thrown in the Mosellse as an offer to the river goddess.
We spend some time exploring this section, there are some things that we haven’t seen before, like a nook with stone benches all facing a stone memorial.
Continuing to explore we are drawn more to the small metal statuettes, their detail is quite admirable and they have heads not like the big stone sculptures where either the head is missing or the nose is cut off or something else was destroyed by time or humans.
And yes humans can be quite petty and vindictive as can be seen in the next exhibit which shows curse tablets that were discovered beneath the Amphitheater, just where we were walking the day before. What are curse tablets? They are thin lead sheets inscribed with binding spells and malicious wishes from one gladiator to another. They were typically folded and sometimes pierced with a nail, and hidden in sacred sites, graves, wells, or springs so the supernatural powers could receive the message. In the Amphitheater case it was underground and in the spring we have seen.
And then there is a collection of less savory items, at least for today’s age. During Roman times this type of amulets, fascinum, were hung near house and shop entrances so the ringing bells would ward off the evil eye and attract good luck, it would be fun to see what would happen now if someone tried that.
And then we reach what is likely the most famous tomb memorial in the museum, the Neumagen Wine Ship. Actually there were multiple ones but only one survived more or less intact and they were part of a wealthy local wine merchant’s grand burial monument along the Moselle River valley.
Next is the mosaic room and now we take our time to enjoy the various mosaics, there is a beautiful one of a horse which we would like in our house if it would be available.
However by far the most famous mosaic, and even set up in a separate section, is the Polydus Mosaic. It is an ancient Roman floor mosaic from the 3rd century AD that depicts the triumphant chariot racer Polydus who was quite famous during that time.
Now we move on to another room and here there is another beautiful display showing a courtyard full of statues placed exactly how they would have looked in the Roman villa. Nearby is another famous object here, the Treverermännchen, depicting a Treveri man in traditional regional attire.
It is now time to climb to the next level in the museum and here is another interesting object, a wooden pylon from the original wooden Roman bridge before it was upgraded to stone.
Here there are lots of other objects, statues and other items, from Roman times and we continue exploring them for a while.
We focus more on the sections without statues as we have seen quite a few already and enjoy the glassware section and especially the clasps section. There are lots of clasps as the Roman togas needed them to be held together and it is interesting to see the differences among them.
We climb one more level and now we have a nice view below us of the rooms we still have to visit. On our level we start with a group of column caps and we hope that the reminder is slightly different as we have seen lots of columns already.
There is then a model of Trier in Roman times, you can see them in every museum here really. More interesting there is a section about tombs during Christian times, with a small section just with tombs of children as there was an epidemic during that time.
You can also see that these tombs start having crosses on them and even doves but otherwise they are not that different, for us, versus the older tombs we have just seen below.
The next small section is showing the goods that Trier exported across the Roman times, it seems it was mostly glass and pottery besides wine of course.
And then we find another special room, the treasury of the museum. Here are the different gold and silver treasures found in and near Trier. The largest and most famous one is the Trier Gold Hoard weighing about 19kg found in September 1993 by construction workers in Trier.
Overall it is not a large room but we enjoy seeing all the hoards that were found in the area, it would be cool to find one of them but it seems unlikely :).
Now we start getting into more medieval times with exhibits about keys and then about the Jewish community here including a lot of their tombs. It seems the museum is really big on tombs….
This section is much smaller, which is good as we have seen a lot of the Medieval history in the Dom Museum. Still it has some religious exhibits and a description of the Prince Elector and what it represented. And then we are done, we take a look in the shop and then it is time to return to the AirBnB.
We pass again by the Dom and then arrive in the Central Square, we are already hot at this time and decide to find an icecream place to celebrate our visit to Trier.
We find a good icecream restaurant and in we go and order two ice creams and something to drink and then relax a bit until the ice cream comes.
The ice cream is quite good looking and it is also very tasty and refreshed it is time to start on our way home buying something for dinner along the way.
We pass through the whole downtown area, saying goodbye to this beautiful city and then arrive at the AirBnB to eat our dinner which is just two hotdogs really.
In the evening we exit one more time to throw away our glass thrash and visit the area right next to the AirBnB finding one more attraction, the High-rise bunker Augustinerhof. This was originally a high rise air raid shelter in World War 2 before becoming a storage site now. And then we go to sleep as tomorrow we have to visit the University and then make our way to Darmstadt.
