5 things you (maybe) don’t know!

Impossible to summarize 500 pages written by twenty-five academic members of the Lorraine University History Research Center! So, with the help of Julien Trapp, assistant to the heritage curator at the Cour d’or museum and president of the Historia Mettensis association, we tell you five unusual stories…

1. Under the Place de la Comédie, a commercial port

It was while carrying out excavations at Place de la Comédie in 1992, to carry out the development of the car park, that wooden jetty piles were discovered. “They belonged to the medieval port of the city of Messina which existed, at least, from the 9th century until the end of the 15th century,” says Julien Trapp. “After the 15th century, this port became a dumping ground. The proof: we found shoe soles there! »

2. Instead of schoolbags, coins

We should know more when Bruno Jané, doctoral student in medieval history at the University of Lorraine, has completed his thesis… “We know that there was a Hôtel de la Monnaie on rue de l’Abreuvoir, where the current Gaston-Hoffmann school, until the 15th and 16th centuries. » A place where money was minted, because since September 23, 1383, Bishop Thierry Bayer of Boppard had definitively abandoned his right to mint Messin(e)s and their Republic.

3. To the East, painted ceilings

Mapping also provides valuable data… “Thanks to it, we realized that the painted ceilings identified in the patrician residences were concentrated in the east of the city, because the hypercenter belonged to the Cathedral Chapter,” reveals Julien Trapp. “In the 12th and 13th centuries, when the patricians gained importance, they concentrated their activities in the East. »

4. We walk among ancient remains

Metz is not Rome! However, at the end of the Middle Ages, the Messins lived in a city which had preserved its ancient traces. “There are still the ruins of the large amphitheater which was located in front of the current Pompidou-Metz center, the walls of the thermal baths in the rue des Trinitaires or the Maison Carrée, where the current covered market is located today,” specifies Julien Trapp.

5. The Wadrinau dike, friend of the mills

Located at the current location of the UEM hydroelectric dam, near Longeville-lès-Metz, the Wadrinau dike was the central part of the Metz hydraulic network. Built at the end of the 10th century or very beginning of the 11th century, it allowed for years to divert and regulate the water of the Moselle to power the floating mills built on the banks of the Place de la Comédie.