Trier in 2 days, on foot

This 2-day self-guided walking plan for Trier covers 13 narrated sights in an easy day-by-day order. Each day is split into a morning and an afternoon loop, and every stop has a two to three minute audio story in the Gingerguide app.

You set the pace: this is a suggested order, not a schedule. Walk it in 2 days, or stretch it out. Reorder freely; Trier rewards a detour.

The Trier route at a glance

Day 1

Day 1 covers 7 stops over about 2 km as the crow flies, from Constantine Basilica (Aula Palatina) to Trier Cathedral (Dom St. Peter). ≈ 2 km between stops, straight line

Morning

1. Constantine Basilica (Aula Palatina): Constantine's vast Roman throne hall, one great uninterrupted brick room built around 300 AD, now a Protestant church rebuilt after wartime damage and left with plain, honest brick walls. 0 km to the next stop
2. Electoral Palace (Kurfürstliches Palais): A rococo palace grafted onto the Roman Constantine Basilica, built for Trier's Archbishop-Electors, with a celebrated staircase and Baroque gardens dotted with statues by Ferdinand Tietz. 0.2 km to the next stop
3. Rheinisches Landesmuseum Trier: Trier's major archaeology museum, holding Roman mosaics, the Neumagen wine ship, and the Trier Gold Hoard of about 2,650 gold coins found in 1993, spanning 200,000 years of history. 0.2 km to the next stop
4. Imperial Baths (Kaiserthermen): A grand late-Roman bath complex that, by most accounts, was never finished as baths; today its towering caldarium wall and walkable underground service tunnels are its most memorable feature. 0.5 km to the next stop

Afternoon

1. Trier Amphitheater: A Roman amphitheatre cut into a hillside on the city's eastern edge, doubling as part of the city wall, with an underground cellar that held animals and condemned prisoners. 1 km to the next stop
2. Liebfrauenkirche (Church of Our Lady): The cathedral's Gothic neighbour, built by French masons in the thirteenth century on a rose-shaped plan, and called by UNESCO the earliest French High Gothic church outside France. 0 km to the next stop
3. Trier Cathedral (Dom St. Peter): Often called Germany's oldest cathedral, this many-layered church joins Roman brick, a Romanesque westwork and the Holy Robe, a relic venerated as the seamless garment of Christ.

Day 2

Day 2 covers 6 stops over about 3.3 km as the crow flies, from Porta Nigra to St. Matthias' Abbey (Benediktinerabtei St. Matthias). ≈ 3.3 km between stops, straight line

Morning

1. Porta Nigra: The great dark Roman city gate that still guards the edge of Trier's old town, which spent centuries as a church before being stripped back toward its ancient form. 0.4 km to the next stop
2. Hauptmarkt (Main Market Square): Trier's central market square, gathered around a market cross from 958, the sixteenth-century Petrusbrunnen and the Rotes Haus, whose inscription repeats the legend that Trier predates Rome. 0.5 km to the next stop
3. Karl Marx House (Karl-Marx-Haus): The 1727 Baroque townhouse where Karl Marx was born on 5 May 1818, now a museum on his life and work; his family left the following year. 0.7 km to the next stop

Afternoon

1. Roman Bridge (Römerbrücke): A working road bridge over the Moselle whose nine stone piers are Roman; widely called the oldest bridge in Germany, it still carries daily traffic on its ancient foundations. 0.3 km to the next stop
2. Barbara Baths (Barbarathermen): Once a vast Roman bath complex, the Barbarathermen were slowly quarried away over the centuries; only foundations and service tunnels survive, now viewed from a raised footbridge. 1.3 km to the next stop
3. St. Matthias' Abbey (Benediktinerabtei St. Matthias): A working Benedictine abbey in southern Trier that claims the tomb of the Apostle Matthias, said to be the only apostle's grave north of the Alps.

Distances are straight-line between stops; streets add a little.

Updated: September 28, 2026

Full Trier guide and all stops →