Month: December 2019

Aalen Fort and Cavalry Barracks

On By Paul Coby and Sally BlandfordIn Army, Cavalry, Fort, Roman GermanyLeave a comment

Overall *** 3 stars – a slice of a major fort, well set-out and explained, with a world-leading reconstruction

Roman features *** 3 stars – key buildings exposed, but much of fort sadly concealed, large Exercise Hall

Display *** 3 stars – good explanatory boards, replica statues and inscriptions, and a viewing platform

Reconstructions ***** 5 stars – the two-storey reconstructed barrack block really moves the debate forward!

Access *** 3 stars – access by sloping gravel paths, signs not multilingual

Atmosphere ***** 5 stars – for the barracks: really feel you were there (but could do with smells too!)

This latest post from our ‘Raetian Limes Adventure’ features the fort at Aalen.  As noted in our previous blogpost, Aalen fort – as befits the  base of the most important unit in the Province of Raetia – is the largest fort on the Raetian Limes at 6.07 ha.  The largest Roman cavalry fort north of the Alps.

Unfortunately, the exposed part comprises only the central range but, given that this contains the HQ buildings, this alone is very interesting.  The northern part of the fort was, alas, built over with housing in the 1920s and the southern part had already been filled by a cemetery.  

There is a viewing platform above the exposed remains which gives you an excellent view of the HQ (principia), complete with a replica statue of xxxxx.  On the path leading to this the Rotary Club of Aalen has thoughtfully provided replicas of some of the best stone finds from the Raetian Limes. There is a relief from a Mithraeum and a statue of the three Mother Goddesses.  

The excavation of the principia was carried out by the Limes Commission before the First World War and has the limitations of the methods then available. Nevertheless the material finds, as exhibited in the Museum, are remarkable.   Inscriptions to the Emperors start with Antoninus Pius, the date when the line of the Limes was moved forward in AD160. At that point the Ala II Flavia moved north from Heidenheim to Aalen where, curiously, they then constructed a complete replica of their previous fort just 30kms to the south! Aalen waw occupied until the collapse/evacuation of the Raetian Limes in AD254,

The principia was built on a massive scale (70m x 60m) to reflect the status of Ala II Flavia, with the typical suite of five rooms at the back where the remains of bronze statues of the Emperors were found (meticulously cut into minute pieces).  There were also dedicatory altars and metal lettering from a lost inscription.  The pride and grandeur of the unit really come across.  

What we found most striking, though, is the enormous exercise hall calculated as being 18m high, for indoor training, briefings and displays.  

The massive exercise hall – shades of the Spanish Riding School in Vienna!

East of the Principia is a large building interpreted as a workshop, but the really stunning and revolutionary exhibit in the Aalen fort is the reconstruction of part of a cavalry barracks. 

There were 12 double cavalry barracks, each with two squadrons (turmae) in the fort at Aalen, and the Museum here has rebuilt the end of one of them.  What is so interesting is that it is a two-storey reconstruction, based on meticulous excavations from Ala II Flavia’s previous base at Heidenheim.

Reconstruction of the Heidenheim Cavalry Barracks

We find this two-storey configuration convincing.  Depending on your view on the size of each cavalry turma in a 1000-person cavalry regiment (ala milliaria) there were between 800 and 1,000 troopers in the fort with as many horses and probably as many remounts, plus grooms and slaves. (Who mucked out the titanic amounts of horse dung from the 1,000-plus horses?) The idea that the well-paid troopers chose to live above the stables (not crammed into a small room behind them) works well from the point of view of space, cleanliness and warmth.  

The techniques for multi-storey buildings were, of course, well understood by Roman architects and ground space was at a premium inside the fort walls.  

The Aalen reconstructions are carried through magnificently with the front room of downstairs housing replicas of the small but sturdy cavalry horses, in a stable complete with Latin graffiti.  The back room is treated as an arms store and office.   Up a precipitous stepladder is the sleeping room (which visitors sadly can’t access). 

If this was the format of cavalry barracks at Aalen then we should surely expect to find them in other cavalry forts around the Empire, for instance at Chesters on Hadrian’s Wall.  Indeed, Historic England is now suggesting that the barracks exposed by excavations there were probably two-storey too.  

The excavations of the double back-to-back two storey barracks at Heidenheim

Limesmuseum Aalen

On By Paul Coby and Sally BlandfordIn Army, Fort, Roman Germany, VicusLeave a comment

Overall: **** 4 stars – another excellent German Limes museum, focusing on the Raetian Limes and with outstanding finds. (Do this and Weißenburg.)

Roman features: **** 4 stars – superb collection of artefacts from Aalen and related sites.

Display – ***** 5 stars – brand-new museum displays, chock-full of interesting material with effective interpretative panels in German and English.

Reconstructions – N/A – but seethe wonderful cavalry barracks and adjacent fort site (see later blog).

Access – **** – 4 stars. Car parking outside (or on street), good access within building, bilingual displays, small friendly shop.

Atmosphere – ** 2 stars. Lively and well-attended but not strongly atmospheric.

On the Sunday after our visit to Weißenburg Museum, ever-enthusiastic gluttons for (Roman) punishment, we visited the Limesmuseum Aalen…

Cavalry Trooper Sport Helmets

You are probably way ahead of us in realising that the name Aalen reflects its origin as the fort of Ala II Flavia, the premier unit in the Roman Province of Raetia.  An Ala Milliaria was a 1,000 trooper strong cavalry unit, probably with twice as many remount steeds. There were only eight of these in the entire Empire, and the officers and troopers were all paid more than their equivalents in the mighty Legions.  So Aalen was a very important place from AD160 to 260, when the Raetian Limes collapsed. Much later it regained its importance as a Free Imperial City in Eastern Baden-Württemberg.

The Museum 

There has been a museum devoted to Roman Aalen and the Raetian Limes since 1964, and we have visited it twice before.  It has just been upgraded (May 2019) by Baden-Württemberg, assisted by the local authorities and the Deutsche Limes Kommission (DLK).  It’s fantastic to see the authorities both valuing their local heritage and seeing the tourist potential.  There is an enormous flow of tourists in the summer ‘doing’ the Limes trails on foot and by bike. The Museum contains the best finds from the Baden-Württemberg section of the Raetian Limes.

Septimius Severus and his wife Julia Domna

The ambition of the new museum is large – it starts by setting the context of Roman imperialism with a forest of portrait busts (reproductions) of Emperors and their families.  This provides as suitably awe-inspiring start.  You then see a magnificent statue (another repro) of Trajan. Why Trajan? Well, the latest dating of the first version of the Lines is ‘early Trajanic’. 

There is a typically confident statement about the purpose of the Limes:

“The Limes, however, was neither a military defensive position, nor a border in the modern sense, but a control line. From here Rome observed the movement of people and goods into its territory”.

One could argue for a long time about the purpose(s) of the Limes (defence, attack, control, customs etc) – but we think this is a pretty good start. 

You then have a choice of route, since the Museum is a large square with a smaller square room inside it.  We chose to go round the outside where there are areas devoted to themes in a logical sequence.

Artefacts from and reconstruction of a ‘native settlement’ in Raetia.

The Raetian Limes were only occupied around AD105-264: compare this 160 year span to the 340 years that the Hadrian’s Wall was occupied! Another remarkable difference from the British ‘Limes’ is that there was little population in Raetia and the Upper Danube area before the Roman occupation, whereas everywhere that has been examined beneath Hadrian’s Wall has shown traces of ploughing before construction bega

In the Roman Army, the Cavalry were, contrary to received wisdom, the real elite units in the Provinces: a Trooper (Eques) was paid 2,800 sestertii a year under Septimius Severus, compared with a Legionary (Miles Legionis) who received 2,400.   

Samian Potery from the Vicus in front of a reconstruction.

The civil settlement (vicus) was the home of many immigrants from across the Empire, drawn by the wealth of the troopers and the opportunity for trade. There are interesting statistics on the food consumption of the 1,000 Troopers in the Ala Flavia, a neglected aspect of the impact of the Roman Army in most museums.

Altars from the Principia

There are some amazing finds from the massive HQ (Principia) of Aalen including lettering from inscriptions and tiny cut-up pieces of what were once bronze statues of Emperors.   

There is also a CV (cursus honorem) for one of the Ala Commanders which brings home how the Army managed the top talent serving on the Wall in Britain as in Raetia, Africa and in Rome. And finally, a striking display of 5 sports helmets (even beating Weißenburg’s 3!) 

To anyone interested in the Roman army, and the cavalry especially, this is a fabulous display of treasures, done in an informative and spacious way. To our minds, one of the cleverest elements in each room are the wall-height recreations of what the places being described actually looked like. All done very accurately – the only minor niggle is the unlikely cleanliness of the roads in the vicus of a cavalry fort (see above), with thousands of horses – let alone all the pack animals…

The construction of the Raetian Limes, brought to life in the galleries.

After all this brilliance, the room in the centre is something of a disappointment, at least to us (although we know some visitors really like it). It aims to bring the life of the garrison, the vicus and the area to life by audio-visual.

Next, you go upstairs where there is an exhibit on the Raetian Limes in a beautiful large white-painted room with a central courtyard open to the sky. Around the walls are almost life-sized photographs of the Limes sites today flanked by line recreations of what they looked like originally.   This, in our view, works brilliantly well.   

What works less well is a touchscreen map with coloured lights showing the way the Roman Frontier in Upper Germany and Raetia (now Baden-Württenberg and Bayern) has evolved: it had already broken, as museum technology often does.  

Finally, there are some remarkable remains from a well into which an innkeeper had lowered his complete set of working materials when the Frontier collapsed. Cauldrons, containers and all were found in the remains of a net, hidden so that he would be able to retrieve them on his return after the Limes were restored. But they remained there until archaeologists found them in the modern era…