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Xanten - Colonia Ulpia Traiana
As noted above, the trip from Cologne to Xanten takes about 2 hours. I arrived at the Koeln Hbf plenty early for my train only to find out once it was supposed to arrive that it was 35 minutes late. So much for German efficiency. I went down to the information desk to see if there were any other workable options and the guy just showed me the train leaving in an hour. So I went back up and waited for my late train to come. So once we got to Duisburg I had missed my train to Xanten by about 10 minutes. So it was a long wait until the next one. Eventually I got to town around 13:00. Since I knew the archaeological park closed at 17:00 I felt like it was going to be a rush to see it.

It takes about 15 minutes to walk from the train station to the park. Along the way you pass the edge of the town which is adorable. There’s a medieval wall, a working old windmill and you can see the cathedral’s twin towers that dominate over the town.

I wasn’t sure what to expect from the Park. I had heard that some people thought it was too Disney-fied. Basically they have reconstructed several Roman buildings including several guard towers. Rather than building the wall they planted hedges between the towers which are now very tall. And they planted trees in avenues to show the street layout. There is the amphitheater, one of the baths, and one of the main gates. There is a partial reconstruction of one of the temples. If you go around the back of the temple there are stairs down underneath it with a gallery of pictures showing the excavations and what the temple would have looked like complete.

There are also some very un-Roman things like a big children’s playground. There were several school groups in the park at the time I was there. They mostly looked like middle schoolers.
The real jewel of the park is the museum. It has a nice collection of objects discovered in Xanten during the excavations. And they have a very large pavilion in the back covering the excavation of another, larger bath. Here you see mainly just foundations and some walls. The complex was massive though. Signage throughout the park is available in English which is nice. I ended up taking pictures of a lot of the signs to read later as I was rushing through the park.

Colonia Ulpia Triana was established around 110 CE. Once again Wiki tells you some of the history. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xanten











interior of rebuilt Roman bath










portcullis winches inside main entry gate




Objects in the museum