Roman era

The first writ­ten doc­u­ment with ref­er­ence to Nieder­an­ven dates at the time of the roman  emper­or Dio­clet­ian from 284 to 305 AD. A Roman card, enti­tled ” Itin­er­ar­i­um Provin­cia­rum Antonin ” indi­cates — on the Roman road from Reims to Tri­er — a stage stop­ping place sit­u­at­ed between Arlon and Tri­er, name­ly ” Ande­thannale vicus Leu­gas XX, which means vil­lage of Nieder­an­ven, 44 kilo­me­tres. So due to the hand­writ­ten doc­u­ments, Ande­thanna is the most ancient name of a vil­lage of the Grand duchy of Luxemburg.

04_NA_LA (11)In Decem­ber, 1919 Gal­lia Varicillus’s grave­stone was found in Hostert. The epi­taph trans­lat­ed from Latin says: ” Set up for Gal­lia Vari­cil­lo, (his) wife, by Mar­cus Secun­dus Sekund­i­nus. Ded­i­cat­ed to the gods of the shadows. ”

Dur­ing the years 1661–1677 Alexan­dre Wiltheim drew up, as a part of his major archae­o­log­i­cal work “Lucilibur­gen­sia Romana”, a geo­graph­ic card of Lux­em­burg at Roman time. “Ande­thanna” is sit­u­at­ed there among Oro­launum ( Arlon) and Augus­ta Trevero­rum ( Tri­er). {Lucilibur­gen­sia Romana}

The ancient Roman road, col­lec­tive­ly called ” Kiem ” in Lux­em­bour­gish, con­nect­ed Reims with Tri­er. ” Kiem ” results from the Celtic ” Kehm ” which means road. This road  was sit­u­at­ed near the cur­rent high­way — com­ing from Lux­em­burg-City through Grünewald up to the neigh­bor­hood of the new water tow­er on Sen­ninger­berg. From there it went prob­a­bly down near the cur­rent ” Rue des Romains ” to reach Nieder­an­ven. It con­tin­ued then its road towards Mens­dorf. Hostert was con­nect­ed with this ” main road ” by a sec­ondary Kiem. Nowa­days it is pre­sumed that the ancient Ande­thanna was sit­u­at­ed in Hostert.

Only hun­dred of years lat­er, in 386 AD, the name of  “Ande­thanna” appears again in hand­writ­ten doc­u­ments: in ” Vita St Mar­tin “, Sulpi­cius SEVERUS describes one of the numer­ous jour­neys of the bish­op of Tours to Tri­er. ” The next day, he (for Mar­t­i­nus) quick­ly raised the camp. On his road of return, he sighed, his soul in pain, for hav­ing been, even for so short a  peri­od, in such an unhealthy com­mu­ni­ty. All this took place not far from the local­i­ty Ande­thanna, where a road crossed soli­tary nev­erend­ing forests. Mar­t­i­nus sat down on the ground “… Sud­den­ly an angel appeared to him and pro­nounced fol­low­ing words: ” Resume your courage and  become strong again “. The local­i­ty where, accord­ing to the pop­u­lar tra­di­tion, all this would have hap­pened, is called nowa­days ” Um Hel­leges­teen ” what means ” at the stone of the Saint “. That is why the mon­u­ment of Holy Mar­tin, set up in 1930, is sit­u­at­ed next to the “Chaussée St. Martin”.