Roman Time

The Sunday after we went to the zoo we went to an old Monastery that had been built on top of a Roman temple, and then to a small Roman fortress/colony. Florian and Ann were back in town staying with Mama and Papa again so they came too before they had to head back home. I think Mama and Papa thought we weren’t seeing enough of Germany so they planned this whole excursion for us haha. Anyway, first was the Monastery, with a cool sundial clock in the courtyard:



The church was very old, I don’t remember how old it was but it must have been a thousand years at least. All of the paintings on the walls had faded away; you can barely see them above the altar. The church was pretty humble compared to others we have seen. I think it tried to stick with Roman architecture, since it was built on the foundation of a Roman temple.



Then we headed down to the crypt! Yay, my first crypt! Brian thinks its weird but I seem to have a strange fascination with crypts, dead people, and mummies. It’s only because we don’t have them at home…and it’s just cool…



Here is the altar in the crypt, and the paintings were a little bit better here. The crypt had moldings that looked very Roman but I forgot to take a picture. It was basically heads with snakes and stuff. Oh, and the bronze face by the window is supposedly John the Baptist’s death mask. Or something like that. Everything was in German so I’m just going by what Brian says.



A better picture of the mask:



Brian was trying to be all artsy fartsy with his photo skills, so that’s why this picture is all crooked. But I wanted to post it to show the different architectural styles that the church had, since it had been built over many centuries.



Then it was off to the Romangarten as the Germans call it. Basically, it was an old Roman colony, mostly made up of soldiers and their families, so it had a bath and an orchard and other things a fortress wouldn’t normally have. Here’s the model of it back in the day:



And here’s what it looks like now:



Not too exciting huh? Yeah, it was kind of a letdown for me, but everyone else was excited so I played along. We stuck around the orchard for awhile because they had plums there, and we picked the nice ones off the ground and ate them. The only part of the fortress that was still standing was one of the towers, so we headed over there and took pictures.





I thought at this point we would be going to the medieval castle I had referenced earlier, but Mama and Papa said it was too late and we had to go back home. I was pretty disappointed, but our Roman excursion was better than staying at home. :)