📍Aula Palatina (Basilica of Constantine), Konstantinplatz, 54290 Trier, Germany
306 – 316“My father was a Roman general who rose to become emperor in the west, and I spent much of my youth at the court of the eastern emperor Diocletian, where I learned both soldiering and politics. In 306 my father died at York, and the army there proclaimed me emperor. I made his capital, Augusta Treverorum, today's Trier on the Moselle, my own. For the next ten years it was my home, my headquarters and the city where I ruled Gaul and Britain. Trier was a grand imperial residence on the river, with baths, a circus, broad streets and a palace complex. Around 310 I built a vast audience hall, the Aula Palatina, where I sat on my throne beneath a great apse, receiving envoys and petitioners in a space designed to make the emperor seem close to the divine. From Trier I campaigned along the Rhine against the Franks and Alamanni, and kept the frontier secure. My mother, Helena, lived here too for a time, and Trier's Christian tradition remembers her gifts to the city. In 312 I marched from Gaul over the Alps and defeated Maxentius at the Milvian Bridge outside Rome, after seeing, as I said, a sign that led me to the Christian God. From then on I supported the church, and I eventually became sole emperor and founded Constantinople. But Trier was the city where I learned to rule. My audience hall still stands, the largest surviving single room from the Roman world, and today it serves as a Protestant church, a strange and fitting second life for a Roman emperor's throne room.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today