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Black gate
The name comes from the darkened colour of the stone
Porta Nigra is Latin for black gate. The name originated in the Middle Ages because of the darkened stone, and the original Roman name has not been preserved. The gate was built in grey sandstone after 170 AD.
Unfinished
The builders never finished the gate, yet it served for centuries
The original gate had two four-storeyed towers. For unknown reasons its construction remained unfinished, and the stones on the outer north side were never smoothed. It was still used as a town entrance for centuries.
Four gates
It is the only one of Trier's four Roman gates still standing
The gate was one of four, one on each side of the Roman city. The others were the Porta Alba in the east, the Porta Media in the south and the Porta Inclyta in the west, next to the Roman bridge across the Moselle.
Simeon
A Greek monk lived in the gate, and it became two churches
After 1028 the Greek monk Simeon lived as a hermit in the ruins of the gate. To save it from further destruction, it was turned into two superimposed churches with identical floor plans.
Napoleon
Napoleon ordered the gate returned to its Roman form in 1804
In 1802 Napoleon Bonaparte dissolved the church and the monastery beside it. On his visit to Trier in 1804 he ordered the gate converted back to its Roman form. Its modern look goes back almost unchanged to that work.
Day 6, morning
Next is Hauptmarkt.
More stories from this trip idea
The words are a retelling of the Wikipedia article Porta Nigra, and are shared under CC BY-SA 4.0. They are checked against those articles, and a fact that is not in them is left out.