The Cathedral of Trèves
"The Cathedral of Trèves," by Edward Augustus Freeman, appears as a chapter in Esther Singleton's anthology *Turrets, Towers, and Temples: The Great Buildings of the World as Seen and Described by Famous Writers* (1901). The piece is an architectural and historical essay in which Freeman, one of the foremost Victorian historians of architecture, examines both the city of Trèves (Trier, Germany) and its extraordinary cathedral church, situating both within the long arc of European history from Rome to the medieval period. Freeman opens by reflecting on the city's dual identity: known as *Trier* to its own German-speaking inhabitants and *Trèves* to its French neighbors, each name preserving a fragment of the ancient Latin *Treveris*, the capital of the Treveri tribe. He notes that its setting—viewed from the amphitheatre beyond its walls—offers a prospect of great beauty beside the Mosel, and that the city's mythological foundation, attributed to the wandering Trebetas, son of the Assyrian king Ninus, reinforces its reputation as one of the oldest cities in Europe, claimed to predate Rome itself by thirteen centuries. The essay's central intellectual move is a sustained comparison between Trier and Ravenna—both were Imperial residences in the declining years of Rome, and both preserve unusual concentrations of monumental architecture. Freeman distinguishes them sharply in character: Ravenna is flat, marshy, and abandoned by the sea, its monuments concentrated in the era of Honorius, Placidia, and the Gothic kingdom; Trier is hilly, riverine, and bridged, and its monuments span a far broader chronological sweep, from the earliest Roman occupation through the full Middle Ages. He identifies Trier as the city of Constantine and Ravenna as the city of Honorius, a formulation that captures the essential difference in their imperial roles. Freeman surveys Trier's principal Roman remains with a scholar's eye. The *Porta Nigra* or *Porta Martis*—the massive Black Gate—he singles out as a structure without peer north or south of the Alps, surpassing anything Ravenna or Rome itself can offer by way of civic Roman masonry. Its date is disputed: some scholars assign it to the great days of imperial residence, while others argue for a date as early as the reign of Claudius. The amphitheatre is conventionally dated to the reign of Trajan. The great basilica, a towering hall of Roman brick, was converted into a Protestant church by the King of Prussia and is judged almost certainly to be Constantinian. But it is the cathedral—the *Dom*—that Freeman identifies as the building most worthy of patient study. He concedes that on first inspection it appears unremarkable, resembling the great Romanesque churches of Mainz, Worms, and Speyer, and seemingly inferior to them in lacking a central tower or cupola. The fifth tower visible in the overall silhouette seems, from a distance, simply another element of the mass, though it proves on closer inspection to be the tower of the adjacent *Liebfrauenkirche* (Church of Our Lady), a remarkably fine example of early thirteenth-century German Gothic—a building entirely distinct from the cathedral beside which it stands. What reveals itself only gradually to the careful observer is the cathedral's truly singular nature: it is, at its core, a Roman building of the sixth century—constructed under a Frankish king yet unmistakably Roman in conception—that itself incorporates surviving fabric from a still earlier fourth-century structure. The great columns' capitals emerge from the later stonework, and fragments of original pillars lie scattered in the cloister and before the western door, exactly as Roman remains lie about in the Forum of Trajan. In the eleventh century the church was repaired and extended in a style that deliberately echoed the original Roman design, before a further series of alterations sought to convert it into something more resembling a standard medieval German church. Freeman closes with a reflection that is characteristic of his historical temper: though it would have been preferable to have the cathedral preserved in its original Roman form, the layered complexity that results from its long sequence of changes presents, for those who relish the intellectual work of reading a building—comparing documentary records with physical evidence—one of the most rewarding architectural puzzles in Europe. The essay, drawn from his *Historical and Architectural Sketches* (London, 1876), exemplifies Freeman's method of treating architecture as a primary historical document, and the cathedral of Trier as a monument that compresses within its walls the entire span of Western European civilization from the late Empire to the Gothic age. Sources: - [Turrets, Towers, and Temples — Project Gutenberg](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/72946) - [Trier Cathedral — Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trier_Cathedral) - [Edward Augustus Freeman — Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Augustus_Freeman)
By Esther Singleton · First published 1909 · Genre: History, Architectural History, Travel Writing