This was written during my month-long trip to Germany, during which I visited the ancient city of Trier.

What's most striking about the Trierer Dom (Trier Cathedral) isn't necessarily its impressive architecture, artwork, or size, but rather how it exists as a historical and spiritual site that's evolved over roughly 1700 years of human history. Standing defiantly as a patchwork of Roman ruins, repairs and additions of the Middle Ages, Gothic elements, Renaissance sculptures, a Rococo chapel tower, and even two contemporary frescos painted in 1974 by Ferdinand Gehr, the Dom could be seen to represent the entire history of contemporary Germany.

Having been first constructed by Constantine the Great, the man who initiated the state adoption of Christianity, and still being used actively today by the residents of Trier for Catholic Mass services, the Dom has stood for the entirety of the history of Roman Catholicism. As such its usage and appearance has changed drastically over the years. It goes to show how major architectural works are created, dismantled, restored, and repurposed over the years.

My initial (mathematical/computational) method of thinking about historical sites such as this is in a very simplistic, clear-cut manner. There is a place called the Trierer Dom constructed in the 4th century by the Romans and I walked inside it. But it's of course muddier and more complicated than this.

One can try to draw lines across original walls and restorations and new additions but even that is complex when the original structure itself was constructed under multiple leaders with different types of stone. Much like the Ship of Theseus, one can't really define whether this is at all the original church or something else entirely. (Which is also particularly relevant to Altstadt reconstruction elsewhere in Germany post-WW2)

This is representative of German history and culture as a whole, existing as a convoluted, overlapping coalition of various principalities, empires, and religions. Central Europe in particular has perhaps some of the least straightforward history in terms of power struggles, dominant ideologies, and the ability to categorize various periods.

The Trierer Dom helped me come to terms with elements of Germany history that I've been struggling with thus far: the fact that it's complicated and fluid by nature, and cannot be simply placed into a box where my analytical brain wants to put it.