True to my plan to visit all the places where Helena may have been, yesterday I went to Trier. Many medieval legends associate her with this city. She is believed to have been born in the city. She is also believed to have given her palace to bishop Agritius of Trier to turn it into a church. These stories have, of course, to be taken with much caution. Both emperors resided in the city, for Trier was an imperial residence from the late third until the second half of the fourth century.
Even if Helena had never lived here, other late antique imperial women almost certainly did. It was a slightly hectic trip for I had a full programme. I wanted to see, first of all, the so-called Constantinian painted ceiling. I also had found out that one can visit excavations under Trier cathedral , which I took for those during which the painted ceiling had been found although this turned out to be wrong, see below.
In addition, I wanted to see the famous Ada Cameo in the Stadtbiliothek. By a stroke of good luck the friend I went with in turn had a friend who works as an archaeologist in the Rheinische Landesmuseum. This colleague not only promised to show us the excavations under the Constantinian basilica her own area of expertise , but also arranged for an exclusive guided tour of the remains under the cathedral with the archaeologist who had excavated them.
What a privilege! This also meant, however, that I had to get through two excavations and three museums in a dayβ¦. The two excavations were simply stunning. These have only been found in the s and revolutionised what scholars had though so far of the church complex in Trier. A short while later, however, the emperor took over, whose palace may have extended to the area east of this church.
Athanasius of Alexandria famously saw this project as a building site when he came to Trier during his banishment Apologia ad Constantium, When the archaeologists excavated this area in the s they found many tiny fragments of the ceiling decoration. These were then painstakenly put back together to reveal one of the most important pieces of late antique painted art: a ceiling of fifteen panels showing putti or eros , bearded men, and, importantly, four women.
