Traiectum beneath Dom Square

There is a staircase under this square, and what lies down there is older than anything you have seen so far.

Around the year forty, the Romans built a fort here on the bank of the Rhine, on the northern frontier of their empire. They called it Traiectum, and the city has never lost the name.

The fort stood here for a few centuries and then vanished under everything that was piled on top of it. That is why the cathedral stands where it does: when a church was needed centuries later, this was the only ground in the area solid enough to carry one.

In the nineteen thirties they dug here and the wall of the castellum came back into the light. That is the same excavation that made everyone so eager to see a Roman in the ship down in the museum basement.

The square has been a protected archaeological monument ever since, so when DOMunder was built, nothing was allowed to be damaged.

We walk a few steps further, to the foot of the tower.