Chasing Karl Marx in the Trier rain

Trier is a city of firsts. Founded more than two millennia ago in 16BC by Roman emperor Augustus, it is Germany’s oldest city. The Roman’s turned Trier into an Imperial capital, and today it has the ruins of some of the most monumental Roman architecture in northern Europe. As is befitting the country’s oldest city, Trier’s St. Peter’s Cathedral is the oldest church in Germany.

The cathedral’s massive bulk towers over Domfreihof, a large square surrounded by elegant buildings. The most imposing is the Palais Walderdorff, built by Archbishop and Elector Johann IX Philipp von Walderdorff. The archbishop was one of the people who elected the Holy Roman Emperor. From the Domfreihof a lane leads into the equally impressive Hauptmarkt, the town’s main square ringed by colourful medieval buildings.

The tower of the lovely Church of St. Gangolf pokes up on one side of the Hauptmarkt, but the entrance is tucked away through a gate in between two buildings. It’s a small sanctuary away from the world. In the square itself is a city institution, the Weinstand Trier. An outdoor wine bar that serves up a rotating selection of wines from local vineyards. It’s hugely popular and, after ‘researching’ a few varieties, deservedly so.

Away from the picturesque centre, Trier’s many sights are a little spread out, which was a challenge given that the weather was wet and unpredictable. This is a town I’ll return to because I’d really like to experience it without the threat of being caught in torrential downpours. On our first day it was so wet we spent most of it indoors. First we headed to the house made famous by the Father of Communism, Karl Marx.

Trier, Germany

Palais Walderdorff, Domfreihof, Trier, Germany

Marx and Roman history, City Museum, Trier, Germany

Sculpture, City Museum, Trier, Germany

Weinstand painting, City Museum, Trier, Germany

Foot from the Colossus of Constantine sculpture, Trier, Germany

I once visited Marx’s grave in London’s Highgate Cemetery so a visit to his birthplace, in what can only be described as a fairly upmarket bourgeois house with a large garden, seemed fitting. Marx was born on May 5, 1818, at Brückengasse 10, and the house now serves as a museum to the man and his legacy … which is fine, except that Marx was less than one and a half years old when his family moved to another house in Trier.

The house has great significance though. Whatever people may think of Marx today, he traveled through Europe (often as a political exile) to investigate the impact on ordinary people of the Industrial Revolution. What he found horrified him and led him to denounced the conditions that 19th century capitalism forced upon people. Few would claim those conditions weren’t utterly inhumane.

Trier, Germany

Trier, Germany

Karl Marx portrait, City Museum, Trier, Germany

Karl Marx birthplace, Trier, Germany

St. Gangolf Kirche, Hauptmarkt, Trier, Germany

Trier, Germany

Marx lived the first 17 years of his life in Trier. Only in London, where he spent the final 33 years of his life, did he live longer. So it is no surprise that the house he was born in was bought by the Social Democratic Party in 1928 to honour his memory. Five years later when the Nazis came to power, they immediately trashed the place and turned it into a print factory. After the Second World War it became a museum.

It’s a small, meaningful and informative place, but it doesn’t hold a candle to the City Museum located next to the gigantic Roman gate, the Porta Nigra. The museum has a few truly magnificent artworks, but it is the inventive way the collection is presented that make it special. Art is presented thematically not chronologically. So you can find great portrait or landscape paintings grouped together from across the centuries. We loved it.

Our second day in Trier was still wet but with occasional glimpses of blue sky. We spent the morning wandering the streets and discovered pleasant squares, cobbled streets and the Electoral Palace. The palace is a beautiful 18th century rococo-style pink and white building, but that is not as fascinating as the fact that it stands in the place where Roman emperor Constantine constructed a vast basilica and palace complex in 310 AD.

Constantine’s palace may have been destroyed, but the Aula Palatina, now the Basilica of Constantine, still stands today as a church. It’s properly impressive. There’s a degree of irony in the fact that Emperor Constantine, who made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire, is as associated with Trier as Marx, who called it the “the opiate of the masses”. With this thought in mind, we left for Brussels as we’d arrived, in a downpour.