© TTM

Cathedral Square/Cathedral City

  • Trier

As early as the Middle Ages, a walled district was formed around the cathedral, the centre of which today, in addition to the cathedral, is the newly designed cathedral courtyard with a magnificent view of the Romanesque west façade of the cathedral and the early Gothic Church of Our Lady. City palaces and cathedral curiae in front of and behind the cathedral (with small alleyways and high walls) show that you are in a special district here - characterised by Christianity from late antiquity at the time of Emperor Constantine the Great to the present day.

The Domfreihof has already seen a lot – including during times before it could actually see. Because in Roman Trier, it was densely built up with Roman houses and a wide ‘cardo’, as the streets running north-south were known. This cardo was demolished on the personal orders of the emperor in the 4th century in order to create space for the giant new church complex. It was not until the subsequent centuries, with their destructions, reconstructions and new constructions, was the decision made not to build the square up as densely as it had been during imperial times.

The cathedral was given its western façade, and the Liebfrauenkirche followed suit. And in the 18th century, the square was dominated by rich cathedral canons, archbishops and other high-ranking church staff: With the city palace of the privy Trier Electorate councillor Count Karl Friedrich Melchior of Kesselstatt, who also managed the episcopal wine taverns (the Weinstube Kesselstatt wine tavern is today located next-door) at the southern end, the enclosed pink Palais Walderdorff at the western end, and the early-classicist gatehouse, also known in Trier as the ‘Geel Box’ (‘yellow pants’), at the northern end. The latter is part of the ‘Philippskurie‘, one of numerous curia which were built as fortified court complexes following the construction of the Domberingmauer wall surrounding the cathedral. This is one of the reasons the small laneway stretching north alongside the ‘Yellow pants’ is known as ‘Look out ’: Those who raced through it would end up in the legal district of ‘cathedral immunity’, meaning they couldn’t be caught by their ‘secular’ pursuers.

On the map

Liebfrauenstraße 12

54290 Trier

DE


Phone: +49 651 9790790

E-mail:

Website: www.trierer-dom.de

General information

Openings
Friday, 08.03.2024 00:00 - 23:59
Saturday, 09.03.2024 00:00 - 23:59
Sunday, 10.03.2024 00:00 - 23:59
Monday, 11.03.2024 00:00 - 23:59
Tuesday, 12.03.2024 00:00 - 23:59
Wednesday, 13.03.2024 00:00 - 23:59
Thursday, 14.03.2024 00:00 - 23:59
Friday, 15.03.2024 00:00 - 23:59
Saturday, 16.03.2024 00:00 - 23:59
Sunday, 17.03.2024 00:00 - 23:59

Next steps

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