Germany · Moselle
Trier
Germany's oldest city, where a black Roman gate, an emperor's throne hall and imperial baths all stand inside a small Moselle wine town.
Trier is the oldest city in Germany, founded by Rome on the Moselle and later an imperial capital of the western empire. What survives is unusual: the Porta Nigra, a blackened Roman city gate still standing four storeys high in the middle of town, plus imperial baths, an amphitheatre and a vast brick throne hall, all UNESCO-listed and all within a short walk of each other. Around them sits a compact wine town of baroque squares, with Riesling slopes on the edge of the built-up area and Luxembourg less than an hour away.
Suggested stay
2–3 days
Language
German
Currency
EUR
Timezone
UTC+2
Why you'll love Trier
Roman on the ground not foundations under glass but a city gate, imperial baths, an amphitheatre and a throne hall you can walk into, all in one small town.
Wine Trier sits in the middle of the Mosel, with steep slate Riesling vineyards inside the city limits and family estates pouring in their own courtyards at Olewig.
Walkable the Roman monuments, the cathedral and the market square all sit inside a ten-minute radius, so a first visit needs no bus at all.
Marx and the border his birth house is a museum on Brueckenstrasse, and Luxembourg City is under an hour down the valley by train.
Best time to visit
Apr-Oct
15-25° days
49.760° N, 6.644° E
UTC+2 · Europe/Berlin
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Weather & when to go to Trier
Month by month: typical highs and lows, rainfall and rain days.
✓ Best Apr-Oct
Cards tinted by calculated verdict · big number = typical daily high, small = low · hover for conditions
When to avoid Trier
Trier is quiet rather than crowded, but the Moselle valley turns grey and damp from November, and January and February have little going on beyond the museums and the cathedral. December is cold and dark, and it is also when the Christmas market fills the Hauptmarkt and the cathedral square, which is the one strong reason to come in winter.
Top things to do in Trier
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Porta Nigra - the black Roman gate
history 👍 PopularThe best-preserved Roman city gate north of the Alps, built around 170 AD from sandstone blocks set without mortar and darkened by centuries of weathering. It survived because a Greek hermit, Simeon, walled himself into it and the gate was turned into his church; Napoleon had the church stripped back out again. You can climb through the arcaded galleries and look down the street it once guarded.
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Trier Cathedral - the oldest bishop's church in Germany
history culture arts 👍 PopularBuilt on the site of Constantine's palace church, so its core is fourth-century Roman masonry with Romanesque, Gothic and baroque layered visibly around it. It holds the Holy Robe, venerated as the seamless garment of Christ and shown only rarely, and it shares a wall with the Liebfrauenkirche, one of the earliest Gothic churches in the country.
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Constantine's Basilica - the emperor's throne hall
history culture arts ⭐ Highly recommendedThe Aula Palatina, a single brick hall from around 310 AD with no columns and no aisles and a ceiling some 30 m up. It was Constantine's audience chamber, and standing in the empty volume is about as close as Germany gets to walking into the late Roman empire. It has been a plain Protestant church since the nineteenth century, and the bareness suits it.
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Kaiserthermen - the imperial baths and their tunnels
history 👍 PopularOne of the largest bath complexes the Romans ever began, never finished as baths, with the towering apse and window arches of the hot room still standing over the ruins. The best part is underground: a network of service tunnels runs beneath the floor, where the furnaces and drains were worked out of sight, and you can walk through them.
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Roman Amphitheatre - the arena under the vines
historyCut into the hillside at the edge of the old town, seating perhaps twenty thousand and now a grassy bowl. The cellars beneath the arena floor survive, with the shafts where cages and scenery were winched up into the ring, and you can go down into them. Vineyards start immediately above the top row of seats.
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Rheinisches Landesmuseum - the Roman collection
culture arts history ⭐ Highly recommendedThe museum that makes the ruins outside legible, with a model of the Roman city, floor mosaics lifted from villas, and the carved tomb monuments of the Moselle wine trade including the Neumagen wine ship and its crew of rowers. A hoard of thousands of gold coins found under a city street is displayed in its own room.
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Karl Marx House - the birthplace on Brueckenstrasse
history culture artsMarx was born here in 1818, in a baroque townhouse his father rented, and the museum inside covers his life, his writing and what the twentieth century did with both. It is even-handed rather than reverent. Chinese tour groups have made it one of the busier addresses in town, and there is a Marx statue a few streets away.
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Olewig - the wine village inside the city
foodA separate village swallowed by Trier, still ringed by its own vineyards and full of family estates whose courtyards open as taverns. This is where you drink Mosel Riesling at source, dry or off-dry, poured by the people who grew it, with marked paths running up through the vines from the edge of the village.
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Roemerbruecke - the Roman bridge piers
history scenicThe stone piers standing in the Moselle were set in the second century and still carry the traffic, which makes this the oldest bridge in the country in daily use. The deck above them is medieval and later. Walk across for the view back at the old town under its vineyard slopes.
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Hauptmarkt - the medieval market square
history shoppingThe centre of the town that grew after Rome left, laid out in the tenth century a block off the old Roman axis and ringed by half-timbered and baroque houses, a market cross and the Petrusbrunnen fountain. On one corner stand the Steipe, the old council banqueting house, and the Rotes Haus with its painted boast about the city's age.
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Kurfuerstliches Palais - rococo palace and the Palastgarten
history scenicThe pink and white palace of the archbishop-electors was built straight onto the side of Constantine's basilica, which tells you how freely the town reused its Roman inheritance. The rococo wing is one of the prettiest in the country, and the formal garden below it runs down past ponds, statues and clipped hedges towards the imperial baths.
Best areas to stay in Trier
$ Budget $$ Mid-range $$$ Premium
Altstadt
First-time visitors $$Compact, Roman and largely pedestrianised
Explore hotels in Altstadt →
Trier-Sued
Value and quiet $$Calm residential streets by the baths
Explore hotels in Trier-Sued →
Olewig
Wine country $$Vineyard village of working wine estates
Explore hotels in Olewig →
Zurlauben
Riverside evenings $$Riverside row of old boatmen's houses
Explore hotels in Zurlauben →
Live nightly prices from Booking.com, Agoda and others, centred on Trier
Getting to & around Trier
Getting there
Fly into Luxembourg, about an hour by direct airport bus, or come by train down the Moselle from Koblenz.
Flight
Luxembourg Findel Airport (LUX)
Around 50 km west, over the border in Luxembourg. A direct airport bus reaches Trier Hauptbahnhof in about an hour, and from the station the Porta Nigra is a ten-minute walk straight up Bahnhofstrasse and Christophstrasse into the old town.
Train
Trier Hauptbahnhof
Regional trains follow the Moselle down from Koblenz in about ninety minutes and run up from Luxembourg City in under an hour; longer routes change at Koblenz or Saarbruecken.
Coach
Trier Hauptbahnhof
Long-distance buses stop beside the main station, and a shuttle links the low-cost airport at Frankfurt-Hahn, roughly an hour north through the Hunsrueck.
Drive
The A1 and A64 meet just outside town, with Luxembourg City about forty minutes west. The old town is pedestrianised, so aim for the garages on the ring.
Getting around
Walking
Flat, compact and the way the place is meant to be seen; the Roman sites are minutes apart.
Free
Bus
The city network hubs at the Porta Nigra and the main station, and reaches Olewig, Petrisberg and the outer suburbs.
TBC
Cycling
The Mosel-Radweg runs through town along the river, flat and separated from traffic. The vineyard slopes are not.
TBC
River boat
Passenger boats work the Moselle from the quay in the warmer months, more sightseeing than transport.
TBC
Taxi
Ranks at the station and the Porta Nigra; handy late, when the bus network thins out.
TBC
Day trips from Trier
Bernkastel-Kues
Full dayMoselle wine town
The best known of the Mosel wine towns: a market square of leaning half-timbered houses under the ruin of Burg Landshut, with the Bernkasteler Doctor vineyard rising straight behind it. Tasting rooms and cellars line the lanes, and the wine museum sits across the bridge in Kues.
Getting there
bus | car
About 1 hr by bus down the valley, or by car
Luxembourg City
Full dayCapital across the border
A capital built around a gorge, with fortress casemates tunnelled through the rock, the Chemin de la Corniche running along the ramparts above the Grund, and a grand ducal palace on a small square. It is the easiest border hop going: a different country by mid-morning.
Getting there
train
Under 1 hr by train
Saarburg
Half dayWaterfall wine town
A small town split by the Leukbach, which drops in a waterfall through the middle of it, with a castle ruin on the rock above and the steep Saar Riesling slopes all around. An old bell foundry in the lower town is now a museum you can walk through.
Getting there
train
About 30 min by train
Cochem
Full dayCastle on the Moselle
The Reichsburg stands on a cone above the river, a nineteenth-century rebuild of the castle French troops destroyed, and the town below is a knot of half-timbered streets and wine bars. A chairlift climbs to the Pinnerkreuz for the view down the river loop.
Getting there
train
1-1.5 hr by train down the valley
A little history of Trier
Trier began as Augusta Treverorum, founded by Augustus around 16 BC on the land of the Treveri, a Gallic tribe on the Moselle. It grew into the largest Roman city north of the Alps, and from the late third century it was an imperial residence: Constantine ruled the western empire from here before Constantinople existed, building the baths, the throne hall and the first church on the cathedral site. Frankish attacks and the collapse of the Rhine frontier ended that in the fifth century, and the city shrank back inside its Roman walls.
It rose again as a church state. The archbishop of Trier became one of the seven electors who chose the Holy Roman Emperor, and his territory survived until French revolutionary troops arrived in 1794 and swept the prince-bishopric away. Prussia took the Rhineland in 1815, and Karl Marx was born a Prussian subject here three years later. Bombing in the last winter of the Second World War wrecked much of the centre; the Roman monuments largely came through, and were listed with the cathedral and the Liebfrauenkirche by UNESCO in 1986.
Augustus founds Augusta Treverorum on the Moselle, on Treveri land.
The Porta Nigra is built as the northern gate of the city walls.
Constantine builds his throne hall and begins the church under today's cathedral.
Frankish attacks end Roman Trier; the city contracts inside its walls.
The Golden Bull confirms the archbishop of Trier as one of seven imperial electors.
French revolutionary troops occupy the city and end the prince-bishopric.
Karl Marx is born on Brueckenstrasse, in what is now Prussian Trier.
Heavy bombing destroys much of the old town in the last winter of the war.
The Roman monuments, cathedral and Liebfrauenkirche are inscribed by UNESCO.
Know before you go
Payment
Cards & cash mixed
English
Widely spoken
Wifi
Reliable
Power
Type C / F
230 V, 50 Hz
Dialing
+49
The months our climate read flags to avoid: the wettest, lowest-rated weather of the year.
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FAQs about Trier
▸ When is the best time to visit Trier?
April to October, with May, June and September the pick: warm enough for the river terraces and the vineyard paths, and the wine villages at their liveliest from late summer through the harvest. January and February are cold, grey and very quiet. December is dark and damp, but it is Christmas market season on the Hauptmarkt, the one real winter draw.
▸ How many days do you need in Trier?
Two. One long day covers the Porta Nigra, the cathedral, Constantine's basilica and the imperial baths on foot; a second gives you the amphitheatre, the Landesmuseum and an unhurried evening in the wine taverns. Add a third if you want Bernkastel-Kues or Luxembourg City as well.
▸ Is Trier walkable?
Yes, and that is rather the point of it. The old town is flat and mostly pedestrianised, and every Roman monument sits within about ten minutes of the market square. Only Olewig, Petrisberg and the outer suburbs really need a bus.
▸ Is Trier really the oldest city in Germany?
It is the standard claim and the strongest one: a Roman foundation of around 16 BC, lived in ever since. Cologne, Augsburg and Worms argue the point on different grounds, and much depends on what you count as a city. The Roman remains, though, are unmatched north of the Alps.
▸ Can you visit Luxembourg from Trier?
Easily. Regional trains run down the valley to Luxembourg City in under an hour, and the border is close enough that thousands commute across it daily. Public transport inside Luxembourg is free of charge, which makes the day out simpler than it sounds.
▸ Do you need a car for the Moselle wine villages?
Not for the main ones: buses run down the river to Bernkastel-Kues, and trains reach Saarburg and Cochem. A car helps if you want the small estates on the slate slopes in between, and passenger boats cover short hops along the river in the warmer months.
▸ What is Trier's wine like?
Mosel Riesling, grown on slate so steep the vines are worked by hand. It runs light in alcohol and high in acid, from bone dry to properly sweet, and the famous villages lie just downstream. Trier grows its own too, on the slopes at Olewig and above the amphitheatre.
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