Aalen Fort and Cavalry Barracks

On December 8, 2019 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 December 1, 2019December 9, 2019 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…

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.

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…

Weissenburg Introduction and Museum

On November 24, 2019 By Paul Coby and Sally BlandfordIn Army, Fort, Museum, Roman Germany, VicusLeave a comment

Introduction

We wanted to get away somewhere Roman for the weekend – so what better place to go than the Raetian Limes in Southern Germany? We flew to Munich, then drove to Weißenburg on Saturday and Aalen on the Sunday, which gave us five interesting – indeed outstanding – sites to review. So here’s our first review: the Limes Centre and Museum in Weißenburg.

We first visited Weissenburg’s Roman sites in 1991, just after they had opened the cover building for the baths and built a reconstruction of the north gate. In fact, it was a picture of that gate in all its glory, illustrating a brochure of B&Bs in Southern Germany, which originally attracted us to visit Weißenburg.

The Lutheran Church with Martin Luther Statue.

Weißenburg is a prosperous small manufacturing town in Middle Franconia, now part of Northern Bavaria, with a beautifully preserved historic centre, nice cafés and a remarkable Roman history. It was one of those fascinating micro-states – a free Imperial City from the late Middle Ages until Napoleon ended the Holy Roman Empire.

Biriciana was one of the largest forts on the Raetian Limes, the land frontier stretching from the Danube at Eining, running roughly along the watershed, and meeting the north/south Upper German Limes at Lorch. The fort – 3 hectares in size – was garrisoned from Trajanic times by the Ala I Hispanorum, a cavalry unit of approximately 500 troopers.

There are three Roman Sites to see in Weißenburg:

The fort site with reconstructed gate
The Baths
The Museum and Limes Visitor Centre.

There’s so much to enjoy – so we will just cover the Museum here and then post separately on the Fort and the Baths.

The Museum

Overall: **** 4 stars – Excellent Limes Museum focusing on the Raetian Limes, with outstanding finds from the Weißenburg vicus. A must-see if you are in Bavaria.

Roman Features: **** 4 stars – The impact of the display of votives had stuck with us from 1991! Nowhere we know of has something like this and the statuettes are also unique – and here we are right on the edge of the Roman World!

Display: **** 4 stars – Very good (with just one nitpick – the spotlights on the votives were out of order, meaning the silver does not currently gleam as it does in our memories!) The other finds, including the helmets, are well displayed and the explanation of the context of the Raetian Limes and its garrison is outstanding.

Reconstructions: * 1 star – The ground floor auxiliaries are dressed up manikins (which is always slightly weird) and the perspex models are fine but don’t add much to one’s understanding.

Access: *** 3 stars – A well-converted historic building with a lift. Some display areas dark (for atmosphere). Captions mainly in German (unlike some Limes sites). No obvious parking nearby.

Atmosphere: **** 4 stars – The top floor displays are highly atmospheric.

Other *** 3 stars – There is some useful material on the Raetian Limes on the ground floor. The Museum has just published a top-notch guide (in German) to its collections which has fine photos graphs, maps and graphics; which add context. There is the usual rack of leaflets on other Roman sites, but not as much as we had hoped for.

You really have to see Weißenburg if you can!

Since we visited in 1991, the Museum has greatly expanded and secured recognition as the Bavarian Limes Visitor Centre. This has resulted in some expensive (but not particularly informative) displays on the ground floor, with the obligatory manikins dressed up as Roman auxiliary cavalry and infantry. There are some rather nice site models. But the reason you are here is upstairs – it amazed us nearly 30 years ago and amazed us again now!

We had very high expectations about this latest visit, having last been here in 1991 – attracted by the reconstructed Gate, then a bit of an exotic rarity even in Germany! A lasting memory was the display of silver votives of great delicacy shining in their display cases in a rather quaint and (back in those days) seemingly low security museum.

Weißenburg Fort was founded as a cavalry fort, probably in Trajan’s reign when the frontier moved north from the Danube to the watershed between the Danube and the Main. (Intriguingly, this is where Charlemagne planned the first canal to connect the Rhine and Danube.). Together with the whole Raetian frontier, Weißenburg fell – or was given up – in 264AD. During its occupation, an extensive vicus grew up on the west side with a major set of baths to serve the well-paid Auxiliary Cavalry troopers – more about this site in a later blog.

Some of the contents of the buried horde, viewed from above.

That the abandonment of the Limes and their forts was a sudden, violent and dramatic occurrence is shown by the deposit of many valuable objects in a box buried in the main street of the Vicus. Fortunately the contents of the box weren’t found until 1979 when the votives, statuettes and other objects were scientifically excavated and preserved. There are various theories about the reason for it being there – temple offerings, everybodies’ valuables or even a trader’s stock in trade.

These finds form the star exhibits at the Weißenburg Museum where the three top rooms on the 3rd floor display the votives and statues with dramatic lighting. The first room contains displays about the campaigns of the 3rd Century and the demonstrate of the Raetian Limes in 254AD.

The three sports helmets with face-masks in the central room are particularly striking and well displayed. The Roman cavalry auxiliaries practised evolutions like the Cantabrian Circle using sports equipment – face masks like these and spears without heads – to demonstrate their skills. The ‘teams’ were thought to be Trojans, Alexander and Amazons. These convey the wealth, sophistication and effortless superiority of the Roman cavalry. As in the 19th Century these cavalry regiments clearly saw themselves as superior to the auxiliary infantry and, indeed, all ranks of a cavalry Ala received about a third more pay than their equivalent in a Roman Legion!

These are high-quality finds from the Hoard.

The room on the right, with subdued lighting, contains all the pots and pans that were found in the buried chest with the helmets. These are also of the finest quality and in a wonderful state of preservation, and show the very high level of material culture in the vicus of Biriciana. You surely would not put these items in the ground if you had some way to take them with you – so the strong inference must be that the Roman citizens of Biriciana had very little time to leave when the end came!

The room on the left contains the votives and statuettes in an almost religious display. They do not disappoint!

The religious atmosphere of the Room with the statuettes and votives

The statuettes are of Roman household gods and – given we are here on the very edge of the Empire – they are of staggering quality and delicacy. The feature Venus, Juno, Vulcan, Mercury and other members of the Roman pantheon.

The votives are, for us, the stars of the show, largely because we have never seen their equal in quantity and quality. They are of extreme delicacy, made out of beaten silver alloy, and appear to have been dedicated in the household shrine for particular events or in thanksgiving.

As a build-up to this dramatic climax, galleries set out the history of the Limes with some excellent graphics on the forts occupied in 160AD and their garrisons.

Replica of the Battle Helmet found at Theilenhofen, east of Weißenburg on the Raetian Limes.

Other galleries feature key finds from the forts at Weißenburg displayed in thematic form – the soldiers’ equipment and armour, the countryside, and other topics. It’s all done very well and spaciously.

This the large display of the Raetian Limes in 160AD filling one Wall.

The only disappointment is the ground floor where there are displays about World Heritage Sites – the Limes, like Hadrian’s Wall, is one – and lifesize auxiliary infantry and cavalryman, plus some perspex models of key sites which somehow don’t quite come to life.

The Model of the North Gate of Weißenburg Fort

The Limes book shop is just nearby in an excellent combined café and bookshop. There you can enjoy a Bavarian chocolate and cream cake and a coffee whilst contemplating the modern statue of Martin Luther outside the Church. (No mistaking which side the Imperial City of Weißenburg was on in the Reformation.)

Marktbreit: Augustan double legionary fortress deep in ‘Free Germany’

On November 3, 2019 By Paul Coby and Sally BlandfordIn Legionary Fortress, Roman GermanyLeave a comment

Overall Impact: * 1 star Site of double legionary camp deep into ‘Free Germany’

Roman Features None!

Display ** 2 stars Eight scholarly board around the site of the camps

Reconstruction None!

Access ** 2 stars Parking in nearby housing estate, paths across the fields

Atmosphere ** 2 stars Curiously atmospheric, provided you have a very good imagination!

Other ***** 5 stars A very strategic and historically important site.

This one is very different site: it shows the diversity of Roman sites and the many ways you can experience the remains of the Empire.

Given the markings above why on earth have we posted Markbreit? Here’s the story…

On business in Germany, one of us had the opportunity to stay the weekend, but this involved driving from Bamberg to Frankfurt. Recalling that there was an Augustan-era Roman army base on the River Main, I checked it out on Wikipedia and found a reference to Marktbreit. Then, utilising the amazingly dense and (legally) extremely fast autobahn network, I drove on Saturday afternoon to the very picturesque little medieval town of Marktbreit on the Main. Arriving at just after 5pm, I found the little town museum had just closed but not despairing, there was very helpfully a leaflet in a box outside the door referring to the extensive Roman finds on display from ‘the site on the Kapellenberg’. Using Google maps I located the site up a very steep hill above the town.

There, beyond a suburb of houses, in a field I spied what looked like a distant information board and, parking the car, I marched over to it. This was one of a set of eight boards around what turned out to be a very large site indeed. I couldn’t see the next board but managed to relate the site diagram to Google maps and after a walk up the hill found the next board and then the next.

Frankly, there is absolutely nothing to be seen above ground, so the ‘eye of faith’ is required. However, what we have here in Marktbreit is the pivotal Roman conquest base in the south of Germania in the years AD4 to AD9. It was discovered in 1985 by aerial photography and caused a sensation since a Roman fortress so far east of the Rhine and north of the Danube had not been suspected. It is polygonal in shape and sits on a sloping plateau high above a bend of the River Main. It is 37ha – yes 37ha – in size and the palisade was 2.25km in length – large enough to accommodate two full legions and auxiliaries as well. It is speculated that the Ist and Vth legions were intended to be the garrisons.

The large camp is built over a Hallstatt Celtic settlement and an earlier 9ha Roman camp.

It appears to have been abandoned before it was used; interesting parallels here with Inchuthill nearly a century later in Scotland. The palisade, the Commandant’s House (praetorium) joined to a high HQ (principia), officers’ quarters, granaries and kilns had been finished. Six coins and a terra sigillata stamp indicate a time period of AD4 to AD9. This strongly suggests that Marktbreit was abandoned after the annihilation of Varus the Governor of Germania and his three legions, by Arminius (Herman) at the Teutoburger Wald in the north of Germany in AD9..

It is important to remember that the Roman High Command had by AD9 decided that Germania was conquered territory, and was a Province inside the Empire. Albeit it was imperfectly subdued but this would have been seen as just a matter of time: consider how long it had taken Caesar and his successors to subdue Gaul. Therefore, planting a double legionary fortress and combined administrative centre in the heart of the south, in the territory of the Hermanduri made great sense. It was at the crossing of the two east-west and north-south lines of penetration: due south was the route to Augusta Vindelicorum (Augsburg); due west down the Main to Moguntiacum (Mainz); east up the Main to Bohemia and the Marcomanni; and north east over the watershed to the River Saal and thence the Elbe.

The Campaigns of Enobarbus and Tiberius
Map – Wikimedia Commons

The display board are tremendously informative and contain a wealth of information about the site and the Roman Army in general at the turn of the Millennium, complete with reconstructions of all kinds, referenced to scholarly works.

Pohl Fortlet (Klein Kastell)

On September 29, 2019 By Paul Coby and Sally BlandfordIn Army, Fortlet, Roman Germany, TurretLeave a comment

Overall Impact *** 3 starts – a striking reproduction of a Trajanic Limes Fortlet

Roman Features * 1 star – the original sites of the wood and stone turrets are marked by apple trees planted c1900. Nothing else is visible. However, there are some wonderful original tombstones from Mainz and finds from the Limes.

Reconstruction **** 4 stars – wonderfully done on the outside (but within the ramparts there are concrete layers not turves). Although clearly built with modern machinery, the impression created is amazing.

Access ***** 5 stars – almost all areas are accessible and there is a slope up to the rampart which also leads to the bridge to the first floor entrance to the turret.

Atmosphere *** 3 stars – despite the concrete showing through and the too perfect finish to the buildings, if you want a feel for what a Trajanic fortlet looked like, you must experience this.

Other *** 3 stars – staffed by friendly local volunteers who are keen to get you to try their Roman mulsum (sweet spiced wine)! The shop has a excellent selection of leaflets, and there are reference books available on the Limes in German.

We found Pohl almost by accident. Having stayed near Frankfurt on Saturday night we made pilgrimage to the wonderful reconstruction and museum at the Saalburg Roman fort, originally bankrolled by the Kaiser when he was leaning towards Roman civilisation (rather than towards the proto-German patriot Arminius). The Saalburg livened up the Kaiser’s summers in Bad Homburg. Unable to find a parking place – the car park and all nearby side roads being jam-packed with Roman enthusiasts – we settled for rushing into the smart entrance cabin and grabbing every leaflet about other Roman sites in Germany – of which there were many!

Leafing through the excellent full-colour guide (in perfect English!) which contained a pen picture of all significant Roman remains and museums on the Limes, we found Pohl. It looked intriguing, with a reconstructed fortlet and watch tower. No matter that it was 70 kms to the west across the border in Rheinland-Pfalz – the German government has thoughtfully provided a dense network of autobahns between sites (many of them still with no speed limit).

The stated objective of this reconstruction is to put into practice and test the latest research and to show to the general public what a complete Limes ‘Klein Kastell’ (fortlet) looked like at the start of the Upper German Limes in Trajan’s reign.

So 90mins later we drove up to Pohl. The first impressions are amazing. Here is what looks like – even 8 years after opening – a brand-spanking new Limes Fortlet. What strikes you most is the steepness of the ‘turf’ ramparts and the white paint and red outlining of the wooden revetments at the top, and all the buildings inside (more below on these).

The History of the Site

The reconstruction stands close to, but not on, the actual site. It is based on the excavations of the original fortlet built, it is thought, in the reign of Trajan. Great weight is given to the details on Trajan’s column in Rome.

The Ramparts

The fortifications look amazing! We immediately asked ourselves how the turf ramparts had not suffered the kind of decay and sagging that soon started to appear at the Lunt Fort reconstruction in the UK. An information board in the car park reveals that their internal construction in fact relies on layers of concrete (and the steepness of the slope is unfortunately causing the turf cladding to slip off in some areas).

The archaeological evidence for wall coverings of white lime with fake stones courses highlighted in red – as adopted at Pohl – is growing and several examples on Hadrian’s Wall have been observed, although it is far from conclusive that every stone or indeed wooden surface was finished in this way. No matter, the fortlet looks spectacular – and the Roman army may have kept its soldiers busy whitewashing every wall… (If one wanted to nit-pick, one could observe that the widely spaced castellations would have shown far to much to the enemy, who could get some good shots in.)

The Buildings

These consist of two half-barracks, one on each side of the entrance, each with four contubernia and a centurion’s rooms. There is a rather grand cross-hall at the end, which is presumably because it was the HQ for two whole centuries, the remainder of whom (i.e. 6 x 2 conturbernia) would presumably have been rotated around the towers up and down the Limes. They have been constructed of wood on sleeper foundations, again strikingly marked out with red painted lines to resemble white-washed and pointed stone construction!

A very attractive feature are the ‘patios’ outside the contubernia with tables and chairs. This feels like something that might well have been the case?

Inside the left-hand barracks there is one convincingly reconstructed contubernium (although surely the shields should be auxiliary not legionary) and a rather excellent set of displays with finds from the Limes forts and fortlets in this sector. On the right side are some ultra-modern rest-rooms and rather nice cafe selling coffee, mulsum and excellent German apple pie.

The cross-hall has some up-to-the-minute projection equipment for film shows (a great facility for the present-day town) and some unusual stone memorials, many of which are from the Mainz legionary fortress which guarded this sector of the Limes – there are architects, officers’ wives etc. These memorials are side-lit, making the inscriptions and carvings easy to read – many other grander museums could learn from this.

The Turret

Just outside the fort – in the same relationship to the fortlet as shown by excavation at the start of the last century – there is a reconstructed turret. Because these were for security reasons entered at first-floor level, there is a sturdy steel bridge from the rampart to the entrance (convenient but not an original feature). Inside the turret there are exhibits on this sector of the limes and Roman military life, all of it top-quality material, well presented. The views over the fortlet are stunning as are the views into Barbaricum (land beyond the Empire).