Trier – Landesmuseum (Trier Gold Hoard)

The Landesmuseum in Trier is very proud of its gold hoard, which they should be as it’s the largest hoard from the Roman period ever found. I can’t begin to imagine how much this collection is worth (the museum says it’s ‘incalculable’) and it’s located in a secure room. It is though difficult to photograph because light bounces off from overhead.

The coins weigh a total of 18.5 kilogrammes and there were 2,650 gold coins within the find. They were found on 9 September 1993 when construction workers were digging a car park, and I can only begin to imagine the horror of the museum when they realised that there were likely many more coins at a dump site for earth from the project.

All of the coins found at the car park site were recovered, but they lost a few of the coins at the dump site, although most were turned in as the law required. The museum recovered what they thought was 96% of the coins, although I’m not sure how they worked that figure out.