Karl Marx's birthplace is a stately three-story house that has been a fixture of this ancient town on the Mosel River since it was built in 1727. What is changing are the large groups that visit almost every day from China, one of the few countries in the world still under the control of something calling itself a Communist Party.
Chinese tourists have started to become common in Europe as China has become richer and tourist agencies have sprung into action. Trier is a worthy destination by any standard, having impressive and important Roman ruins as well as an 11th century cathedral built in the very place where Emperor Constantine's mother first built a church in the fourth century.
But the Chinese clearly come to see the place where Marx was born in 1818, and the local authorities try to take full advantage of it, promoting their city in China itself and with the travel agencies that serve Chinese tourists.
They even offer cultural sensitivity training for merchants, restaurateurs and others in Trier, instructing them in the finer points of dealing with Chinese customers.
"Years ago, state visitors from China used to come to see the Marx House," Robert Noll, chief of Trier's Tourist Development office, said. "They would spend a couple of hours, take a picture and then leave. But in the late 1990s, when Chinese tourism picked up in Europe, we saw the opportunity."
"Now the Chinese are second after the Dutch in overnight stays," Noll continued, adding that about 100,000 Chinese citizens visited Trier last year, and about 40,000 of them spent at least one night.
"And they come all year," he said, "even in the low season."
But what of the Chinese themselves? After all, the ruling party in China might call itself Communist, but China is capitalist today, having rejected Marxism in practice if not in theory. Do they come to Trier as pilgrims to a kind of shrine?
"Nah," one man, who said he was from Harbin in the far north of Manchuria, said dismissively. A minute earlier, the man had struck a sort of mock revolutionary pose for a photograph next to the inscription identifying the house as Marx's birthplace. He did not seem reverential.
"It's just a stop on the tour," he said. "We went to Paris and Brussels, too. It's a six-day trip."
Judging from the comments in the Marx House guest book, most of the Chinese visitors seem to agree, extolling him as a great figure whose name will burn brightly in China forever.
But widely spaced on the book's pages were some dissenting opinions, all unsigned, one going so far as to bemoan what the writer described as the Communist authorities' use of Marxism as a pretext for oppression.
"Marxism is not bad," one person wrote. "But it is a dream, beautiful only as philosophy."
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