Information Service

The Lower Rhine town of Xanten knows how to present its 2000-year history in a very attractive way. Willi Fährmann, the distinguished writer of books for children and young people, reveals what other aspects contribute to the high quality of life in this Roman city.

Mr. Fährmann, you have lived in Xanten, a small town with a population of about 20,000 on the Lower Rhine, for nearly 50 years. What do you like about living here?

I came to Xanten to work as a headmaster in 1963 and soon made a surprising discovery. There was more going on this small town than in the much larger suburb of Duisburg where I grew up. That was to be seen more than anything else in the fact that people were generally much more involved in cultural, public and political life. That is still true today.

Xanten is the only German city that begins with the letter X. What makes Xanten unique for you?

For me, it is above all its history, which goes back 2000 years and is still alive today. Our house stands on the foundations of the Roman city wall. The towers of the wonderful Cathedral of St. Viktor are a stone’s throw away. The rebuilding of the city, which was totally destroyed in February 1945, was a resounding success.

800,000 tourists visit the old Roman city each year. What should visitors be sure not to miss?

A trio of attractions are of interest to every visitor: the cathedral with its convent museum, the Archaeological Park with the Roman Museum and the historical city centre with the Nibelungen(h)ort.

At what time of year is Xanten particularly attractive?

When I walk through the town with my wife or drive within sight of the towers and walls, we always notice that different weather shows the city in a different light – the summer sunshine, often with lots of clouds scurrying across the sky, the misty, overcast days that cast an attractive grey sheen over the countryside, and the few, wintry frosty days that make the lakes between the city and the Rhine freeze. When it rains for a few hours and you are sitting in one of the town’s many cafés watching the raindrops splash on the pavement, you realise that Xanten is a town for all seasons.

Which building do you think is the most exciting?

The cathedral, the roots of which go back to the fourth century. The present is not suppressed. The crypt invites you to learn from the past how to shape the future.

Germany’s largest integration festival for people with and without disabilities, “Encounter Day”, has taken place at the impressive Archaeological Park in Xanten every year since 1998. Is Xanten a particularly open city?

That is a day in the year of which many people in Xanten are proud. Centuries of practice in dealing with the Romans, Spaniards, French, Dutch, British and Americans have given the people a wealth of experience of human coexistence. Xanten is indeed an open city.

What are the best subjects of conversation with people from Xanten?

The everyday questions of town planning, especially the intersections: “Should everything stay as it always was?” or “Should there be contemporary design?” But don’t worry about it. The cabaret artist Hanns Dieter Hüsch realised and said something to the effect that people from the Lower Rhine region don’t know anything but they do know how to talk about eveything.

Xanten is the birthplace of the hero Siegfried from the Nibelungen saga …

The problem with Siegfried is that “nothing precise is known” about him. There is a sentence in the Nibelungenlied saying that the hero is supposed to have been born in a “rich castle called Santen”. A sceptic at the first planning meeting for setting up a Nibelungen museum in Xanten suggested that a smoke bomb be lit at the museum every hour. That was all that was known about the hero’s origins in Xanten. When exactly was he born? Where exactly? The few lines in the Nibelungenlied tell us nothing about it. But now a respectable collection has been made, documenting the very varied ways in which the heroic saga has been dealt with in the past. It demonstrates once again that people in Xanten can develop amazing things from very little.

In your story “Siegfried of Xanten” your write the following about the “city of Xanten, which is known everywhere”: “It lies where the Rhine flows towards the sea.” Can the sea still be felt in Xanten today?

My longing for foreign places and for the sea becomes tangible when I stand on the nearby banks of the Rhine and see the ships. It is quicker to go towards the sea than upstream. Many people from Xanten have a virulent desire to search for the world beyond the horizon. The Südsee (south lake in Xanten, but also meaning South Sea) and the Nordsee (north lake in Xanten, but also meaning North Sea) come very close, even in the names of the lakes between the city and the river.

Do you have a favourite place in or nearby the city?

When I stand on a hill of the nearby end moraine and let my my gaze wander over the city below, I find it hard to move on. But the view of the Roman Museum, the old mill and the large park from our house behind the garden make me feel completely at home here.

Which culinary specialities from Xanten would you recommend – and where is the best place to enjoy them?

You could make an endless list of the delicious things you can get at the restaurants and cafés. My wife and I sometimes sit down at Café Küppers in Klever Strasse. But there are lots of alternatives. My wife also loves cooking. The food on our family table is always good. Today we are having turnip tops. You don’t know them? Shame. You’re missing something delicious.