Igel Column

In the middle of a Moselle village, next to the road between Trier and Luxembourg, stands a Roman tomb that has never been moved, never buried and never fully lost. The Igel Column is a pillar of red and grey sandstone about 23 metres high, raised in the 3rd century AD, probably around 250, by the Secundinii, a wealthy family of cloth merchants and landowners. Two of them, Lucius Secundinius Aventinus and Lucius Secundinius Securus, put up the monument for their relatives and themselves, and it is the best-preserved Roman pillar tomb north of the Alps.

What makes it extraordinary is how much of everyday Roman business it shows. Above a stepped base and podium, framed by flat Corinthian pilasters, carved panels cover every face. Mythological scenes sit alongside episodes from the family's own trade: cloth being delivered and inspected, bales on the move, a covered travelling carriage, tenants arriving at the house with gifts of a hare, fish, an eel, a kid, a rooster and a basket of fruit. On one relief a small milestone is marked with four Gallic leagues, roughly the distance to Trier's Roman bridge. At the very top, above a roof carved like overlapping scales, an eagle carries off Ganymede. The stone was originally painted, and a coloured replica in the courtyard of the Rheinisches Landesmuseum in Trier shows how bright it once looked.

Local tradition explains its survival through a happy misreading: medieval viewers took one of its three-figure scenes for the wedding of the emperor Constantius Chlorus and Helena, the parents of Constantine the Great, and so left the pagan monument alone. Goethe passed it in 1792 while following the Prussian army into France and wrote about it with admiration, and it was later sketched and engraved by many travellers. Since 1986 it has been part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site that groups the Roman monuments and great churches of Trier.

Trier, a few kilometres downstream, was founded by the Romans as Augusta Treverorum and served for a time as an imperial residence; its Porta Nigra gate, basilica and baths still dominate the city centre.

Getting there

The column stands in the village of Igel on the Moselle; Konz is about 2 km away across the river and the centre of Trier around 9 km downstream. Igel has its own station on the regional line between Trier and Luxembourg City. The nearest airport is Luxembourg Findel (LUX), about 26 km away across the border; the nearest German one is Saarbrücken (SCN), about 68 km away.