You could imagine a Roman legionary in the army crossing under the Porta Nigra in the city of Trier when the Porta Nigra was opened in 200AD. He might be hoping that he and his fellow soldiers were finally safe here so far from home in Rome hundreds of miles away. He knew that this city gate was the largest and most impressive north of the Alps, and he was justly proud of it. He hoped it would remain for his children and children’s children to see along with the grape vines he and his family had planted on the slopes of the Moselle River to make wine, new in this region. He would remember the stories of the Varusschlacht in 9 AD when Rome almost lost its foothold in Germany. It was a horrible massacre, the worst defeat of the Emperor Augustus. This legionary looked iup at the shining white Porta Nigra (in those days it had yet to blacken) and saw the future of Rome in Europe. He would have been awed to see tourists like you there 1800 years later admiring what he was admiring that day and finding it still extant —- not destroyed by wars in the Middle Ages or bombers in World War 2—- events he could not even imagine that day in the year 200AD.