A little road train on tires often awaits passengers on the riverbank: the centre of Xanten stands back from the Rhine, and the Nibelungen Express shuttles between the landing and the old town. Its name says it all. According to the Song of the Nibelungs, this is where Siegfried, the dragon slayer of the great Germanic epic, was born. Local reality has nothing to envy the legend: a Roman colony brought back to life stone by stone, a Gothic collegiate church and the only town in Germany whose name begins with an X.

Colonia Ulpia Traiana

Nearly two thousand years ago, a Roman city of about ten thousand residents prospered on this bank, at the northern frontier of the Empire. Later spared by modern construction, it offered archaeologists a rare field of study. The park laid out on the site ranks among the largest open-air museums in the country: a rebuilt amphitheatre, the harbour temple standing on its podium, walls and gates restored to their original height. You move from one building to the next along wide grassy avenues, effortlessly picturing daily life in a colony on the Roman Rhine.

Baths under glass

Within the park, the Roman museum rises above the remains of the great baths, protected by a glass-and-steel structure that echoes their vanished volumes. Mosaics, funerary stelae and everyday objects tell of legionaries, boatmen and merchants, while walkways let you look down on the ancient bathing halls and gauge their scale, underfloor heating included. The whole can be explored at your own pace, and enthusiasts can easily spend half a day here; others will take in the essentials in an hour or two.

Around St. Victor's

The old centre is organized around St. Victor's Cathedral, one of the most imposing Gothic churches between Cologne and the North Sea, whose two towers serve as a landmark across the plain. At its foot, the market square lines up cafés and terraces under the trees, against a backdrop of well-kept façades. On the old ramparts, the Kriemhildmühle windmill, named after Siegfried's wife in the epic, still turns its sails and grinds its grain: the adjoining bakery smells wonderful, and you gladly leave with a still-warm loaf under your arm. A museum devoted to Siegfried and the legend's legacy rounds out the stroll for the curious.

Between the Rhine and meadows

Around the town, the Lower Rhine unrolls a landscape of meadows, dikes and ponds; two recreational lakes border the south of the municipality, frequented by sailboats and walkers. The river itself has changed its bed over the centuries, which explains the distance between today's quays and the original city. This flat country lends itself to leisurely bike rides and short walks, but most passengers devote their hours ashore to Xanten's singular face-off: Rome on one side of the path, the Middle Ages on the other.

Port of call at a glance

On the way back, the little train crosses the meadows again toward the riverbank, and you take a last look at the collegiate church towers rising above the rooftops. Few ports of call tell two thousand years of history so clearly in a few hours of walking: an ancient colony brought back into the light, a medieval town that smells of warm bread, and a river that has seen legions and legends pass alike.