Reconstructing the Romans

On our way from Bratislava to Vienna we made a stop off that was well worth it at Roman Carnuntum to what was actually quite a small site. What it lacked in size though was dramatically made up for in the incredible reconstructions. Not to sound like a travel agent for the museum but we would recommend this above any Roman sites we've visited so far, possibly including Rome or Pompeii.

The museum started with a huge map of the former site covering 50,000 inhabitants and 10km². Although only 0.5% of it has been uncovered the archaeologists and builders have faithfully reconstructed the buildings from the remains available to them. In the foreground you can see the civil amphitheatre in front of the main civil town of Carnuntum. Further away is the initial Roman fort, an earthwork with wooden palisades, and behind that still is the later stone fort.

First stop in the site was at the oil and grain company complete with a storeroom, place for carts, and this snazzy looking office. As you can see Rob was doing his best Alan Sugar impression, I'm not totally convinced he knows who Alan Sugar is though...

Around the back of the grain company was one of the features that make this site so impressive, the kilns. Built to Roman specifications these were used to make all of the bricks used in the reconstructed buildings. Not only were the bricks authentic but all the timber was cut by hand and the buildings were all made according to the historical evidence we have.

A notably missing feature of the site were the lack of upstairs floors. While we know what the they did have upstairs in their buildings there is very little evidence for what it looked like given that none of them had survived here, and very few in the Roman world generally.

Using the collapsed walls which are now in a local museum they were able to faithfully recreate the paintings on a whole load of rooms including this impressive dining hall.

The real treat of this site though was the baths. This is the only example in the whole world of a fully functioning Roman bath recreation. Starting in this room was the Frigidarium which was a cold bath in a medium temperature room to cool bathers down ready for the warmer baths.

After the frigidarium was the tepidarium, a warm room but with no water. Finally was the Caldarium which is a warm room with a warm bath. The whole building was heated like an authentic roman baths with a wood burning fire.

Even the hypocausts were functional!

However, sadly our new crepe pan was not so functional.

After our visit to Carnuntum,we headed to Vienna for the afternoon and evening ready for our 3 day visit!