Photo credit: (c) Sorin BLADA / AGERPRES ARCHIVE

Set in an almost flatland area, on the national road linking the towns of Hateg and Caransebes, the former capital of Roman Dacia reveals itself to the traveler as soon as he steps within the boundaries of the Sarmizegetusa commune — Hunedoara County. The fortress walls are visible from the road and the tourist who stops to visit can use the parking lot right in front of the monument’s entrance gate.

Historians consider the Dacica Sarmizegetusa colony as the oldest urban settlement in Roman Dacia, being also its largest cultural and religious center. The precise date when the city was founded is unknown, but right from the beginning it had a privileged top position in the province.

“One of the first coins minted for the province has the colony-founding religious ritual represented on it. This is a bronze sestertius issued in Rome for the celebration of this event. As shows the image imprinted on the coin, the foundation of the city was performed according to the ancient rite the Romans inherited from the Etruscans (Etrusco ritu). Featured on the obverse is the effigy of Emperor Trajan, and the reverse shows a man with a plough drawn by a white ox and a white cow, furrowing the pomerium — the swath of land defining the boundaries of the future city walls — in a ritual that had been identically performed at the foundation of Rome.

“Governor Decimus Terentius Scaurianus must have been the one who, dressed as cinctus Gabinius (that is as an officiant, with a particular belting style for the toga and with his head covered with a fold of the garment), ploughed the ground on behalf of the emperor, to mark the limits of the future city, and leaving unfurrowed the spots where the gates of the colony were to be positioned.

It would have been interesting for this to have happened immediately after the Roman — Dacian war, but this administrator of Roman law has held this office sometime between 107 — 112, although the precise years of his tenure are not known. Therefore, this landmark moment in the life of the city cannot be exactly pinpointed on the timeline, and is still an unsolved enigma,” says Dr. Gica Baestean, head of the ‘Sarmizegetusa Museum’ section of the Deva city Museum of Dacian and Roman Civilization (MCDR).

Photo credit: (c) Sorin BLADA / AGERPRES ARCHIVE

Spanning an area of about 34 hectares inside the walls and with another 60-80 hectares outside walls, Ulpia Traiana belongs to the medium-sized cities of the Roman Empire. The population living in this area counted nearly 20,000 people. The city also had a territory assigned to farming, where lower rank settlements like Germisara (the present-day Geoagiu spa) or Aquae (Calan spa) developed too.

The tour of the historical monument begins with the amphitheater that immediately captures the tourist’s attention. The large-size building could accommodate in the stone stands about 6,000 people. This is where gladiatorial shows, drama or sport events were held, and the viewers took their seats in a very strict order. Seated on the stone benches in the first rows were the members of the city aristocracy, behind them the members of the equestrian order, followed by businessmen, and the rear rows were reserved for common people and women.

In the amphitheater area there is also a temple dedicated to medicine gods Aesculapius and Hygia. Another temple here is dedicated to Nemesis, worshipped as the goddess of balance, justice and fortune the gladiators badly needed in the combat.

Between the temples and the city walls a winding road runs west to east. It is a fragment of the imperial road the locals still use on some portions. Like all Roman roads, it was built according to the highest standards of urban engineering and its route is entirely known. It was the most important travel route, not just a connection between the south and the north of the province, but a connection between a remote area north of the Danube and the rest of the Roman Empire. The road came from Drobeta (present-day Drobeta Turnu Severin) via Tibiscum and Sarmizegetusa, then deviated northwards to Apulum, Potaissa, Napoca and ended in Porolissum (Moigrad), the northernmost point of the province.

Right near the city entrance is one of the most important buildings, the ‘domus procuratoris’, the palace of the financial procurator of Dacia Apulensis. This magistrate was a very important character in the provincial hierarchy, practically second in rank after the governor. He was a sort of finance minister, dealing with the collection of taxes and dues, but also had a major responsibility with the payments to the army. The partial archaeological digging done at the palace unearthed two thermal bathing facilities, a temple, offices, etc.

One of the walls of the buildings here is over 1 m thick. It’s hard to say what the height of this building might have been, but it must have supported a huge weight, probably put on it by several floors. During the reign of Augustus, buildings in Rome could get 20 m high. This height limit was set at the emperor’s intervention because buildings exceeding this limit would have been at risk and were unsanitary as well. Similar measures were taken by emperors Nero and Trajan. Buildings couldn’t have reached such heights in Sarmisegetusa, but there must have been multi-storey buildings here too.

The forum of the Dacica Sarmizegetusa colony is the center where the main roads intersected, the northern entrance having a public fountain on each side. The court of the forum was paved with marble blocks and from there one could head for the basilica, a building towering the architectural ensemble. From this space one could also enter the curia, where the city decurions — members of the local council — discussed the city’s major issues, under the chairmanship of two mayors.

The city’s sewage system, the stone blocks, ceramic tubes and pipework give us good reason to place the Dacian metropolis alongside the major cities of the Roman Empire, which implied the use of top state of the art urban planning and engineering.

Head of the Sarmizegetusa Museum, Dr. Gica Baestean, the man who greets you at Ulpia Traiana Sarmizegetusa, well prepared with all the necessary explanations, is actually the one who organized this museum dedicated to this historical monument, attempting to provide the visitor, with the help of experimental archaeology, a picture of what this urban settlement may have looked like almost 2,000 years ago.

As the numbers of tourists visiting Ulpia Traiana is rising steeply, the Deva Museum of Dacian and Roman Civilization — the administrator of the site — developed an ambitious plan to restore the Roman amphitheater at the city entrance. The reconstruction of the amphitheater at its real-life size would require five million euros worth of funding, says MCDR Deva manager Liliana Tolas, adding that the authorities in charge want to include the project in one of the EU financing axes and apply for non-reimbursable funding.

The monument is already included in the European project “The Roman Emperors Route”, which considerably enhanced the visibility of this tourist attraction, outside country borders as well. AGERPRES