1st Century Roman Temple in Mainz

I asked our museum guide if there was anything else we should see before leaving Mainz (John and I had a little more time after saying farewell to the group). He recommended we visit a 1st Century Roman Temple that was discovered in 1995 under a shopping mall.

The Roman Temple was really interesting. It was down under street level. They call it the Sanctuary for Isis and Mater Magna, two Roman Gods. You get to it through the Römerpassage shopping center. Visiting was free (donation appreciated). There’s no money for funding from the city.

This temple in Mainz is the only excavated building of this type dedicated to Isis in Germany. They’ve found some similar ones in Aachen and Cologne and Augsburg, that only have some inscriptions or reason to guess what they were by inscriptions found there.

There was a walkway all the way around the Temple, so we could look down into it. The stone walls were all intact, and well-defined. Around the sides we looked at displays of all the things they excavated there–many were things brought to the altar of sacrifice: pots, glass, figures, oil lamps, messages rolled on small metal sheets, lots of bones of things like chickens and small animals, and more. They had movies playing on the walls of what happened here. It was really interesting. Glad we saw it. It’s pretty thrilling to see something that was here when Jesus walked on the earth.