Welcome - Romans in Olomouc

Camp

The camp development included leather tents separated by streets. One tent was for eight legionnaires. According to ancient author Hyginus, a space of 120x30 feet was reserved for a century. Tents of the centurion and other officers were bigger and more spacious. A camp for one legion could take up an area of app. 20 ha, with legionnaires being able to build it in 5 hours. Tents of Roman legions were made of goat and calf skins.

Fortification

Legionnaires were building fortified camps where they could be safe overnight during their military expeditions to enemy territories. Building materials included soil, sods and wood. The extracted earth was used to pile the protective wall into which "pila muralia" was inserted, giving rise to a palisade approximately one metre high. If a legion was to spend more time in the camp, towers were built, too.

Legionnaires

A Roman citizen had to take the oath when entering the legions. With that oath, Romans undertook to the proper performance of the conditions of the service while abandoning their civil right to appeal against the death penalty at the same time. As to the armour of the legionnaires, they were using plate armour in the 1st and 2nd century in addition to the commonly used chain and scale armours.

Trench

A temporary rectangular camp with rounded corners was built in the enemy territory every evening. At first, the camp was sized, then a trench with a depth of 1 m was excavated and soil was piled on the inside. The camp was delimited by fortification in form of a linear routing of a spiky trench in a sharp "V" letter profile. The trench width ranged from 3.7 to 4 m and the depth was between 1.2 and 1.7 m.

Gate

The Roman troops were building tents after arriving in the place of destination. Some soldiers were excavating trenches and piling a wall inside the trench, using soil and sods. Spiky poles that soldiers were carrying with them were inserted in the wall. The walls were broken by gates in four places. Short protective trenches preventing direct access in places where the trench and wall were broken were built in front of some gates.

Dear Visitor

You have just got to pages dealing with unique discoveries of historic importance not only for the city of Olomouc but also for the broader region of Central Europe. The place where Olomouc is nowadays situated was regularly selected for founding of villages as early as from the Neolithic period. It is where important crossroads near a ford across the Moravia river was located. That was probably one of the reasons the today's city of Olomouc was chosen by Roman soldiers to build a temporary camp found in 2001 in Neředín.

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