Roman Civil Town of Aquincum

A colonia beside a legion

Around AD 200 the civil town of Aquincum stood on the right bank of the Danube, in what is now Óbuda, the northern district of Budapest. Just to the south lay the fortress of the Second Legion Adiutrix, stationed on this stretch of the frontier since the late first century.

The town had climbed the ranks quickly. Hadrian made it a municipium in 124, and in 194 Septimius Severus raised it to a colonia. Aquincum was also the seat of the governor of Pannonia Inferior. Early in the third century the civil town reached its peak, with 10,000 to 12,000 people.

Not everyone in the town was an incomer. The local Eravisci were Celts, and their women kept a dress of their own: tall, turban-like headdresses, woollen overgarments pinned at the shoulders with large winged brooches, and thick twisted torques. Other women wore the Roman tunic and palla.

Spring water on stone arches

The two main streets met at the forum, paved with dressed stone. Its podium temple honoured the Capitoline Triad of Jupiter, Juno and Minerva, and the council house and basilica beside it were rebuilt with a Corinthian portico.

Along the main north-south street stood the great public baths. South of them was the macellum, the market hall: a colonnaded court of shops around a small round building with half-columns. Spring water came in from the north along the arches of an aqueduct.

The craftsmen's quarter was tightly packed. Its houses measured about 15 by 17 metres, with shops at the front and workshops behind, and wagon wheels cut ruts into the street. In the colonia years a stone wall with rectangular towers about 90 metres apart began to rise around the town. How far it had got by 200 is not known.

An organ for the fire brigade

The town's most famous find belongs to the next generation. In AD 228 Gaius Julius Viatorinus, an official of the civil town, gave a portable organ to the guild of textile dealers, who also served as Aquincum's firefighters. Their hall stood inside the walls, by the south gate.

In the middle of the third century a fire destroyed the hall, and the organ fell into the cellar beneath it. It lay under the rubble until 1931, when foundation work for an electricity converter station turned up nearly 400 of its pieces, whole and broken.

Where Budapest's story starts

For Hungarians, Aquincum is the opening chapter of the capital's history, the Roman ancestor of Budapest. Excavation began in 1875. Today the ruin field of the civil town, with its streets, baths and market hall laid bare, is a staple of school trips, and a working replica of the organ stands in the Aquincum Museum.

The town itself faded out. By the fifth century the civil town was deserted, its people gone to the settlement around the fortress or deeper into the province. What remains is its plan in stone, a Roman street grid beside the traffic of Szentendrei út in modern Óbuda.

Sources

• Wikipedia (hu): Aquincum-polgárváros
• Wikipedia (hu): Aquincum (történelmi település)
• romaikor.hu
• Wikipedia (en): Aquincum