Archaeological site Gamzigrad Romuliana

The archaeological site Gamzigrad–Romuliana is situated in the vicinity of the village of Gamzigrad in the territory of the municipality of Zaječar in eastern Serbia. It is located on a plateau surrounded on three sides by a rolling landscape which forms a shallow amphitheatre. On the north side the plateau descends gradually to the Crni Timok River.

The exceptional importance of Gamzigrad as an archaeological site was recognized as early as the middle of the nine-tenth century. Geologists, historians and archaeologists who travelled in that part of Serbia described it and interpreted it as „the remains of one of the most splendid edifices of the past“.

One of them, the Austrian-Hungarian traveler Felix Kanitz, made, in 1864 and 1869, drawings of it in support of his assertion that „one of the largest and best preserved Roman buildings in Europe“ was located in that place. At the end of the nineteenth century the Romantic fascination with Gamzigrad as the ruins of an ancient town was replace by a restrained, strictly rational attitude, and it was interpreted as a military camp or the seat of the governor of the mines in the surrounding area.

This simplified view of Gamzigrad persisted until the middle of the twentieth century, when systematic archaeological investigations were initiated. The excavations, which began in 1953 and are still in progress, have shown that Gamzigrad was in fact a sumptuous palace, one of the most representative and most elaborate monuments of Roman court architecture.

Magura is a high elongated ridge, over which ran the main road to Romuliana. In 1990 the remains of a monumental tetrapylon were discovered in a place which commands an extensive view of Romuliana. Associated with this tetrapylon were two mounds and two  mausolea, found to the south of it, on the top of Magura.

It was established that these remains were in a direct spatial, historical and functional relationship with the fortified palace. All this shows that the architectural complex Gamzigrad–Romuliana was built by Emperor Gaius Valerius Galerius Maximian, Diocletian’s successor in the time of the second tetrarchy, i.e. in the late third and early fourth century A.D.

The inspiration for the construction of this fortified palace can be found in the program of the tetrarchical form of government. According to this ideological program, the emperor was to step down from the throne after twenty years of reign an retire after the celebration of his vicennalia.

This new phase is characterized by even more sumptuous decorative elements executed in a variety of materials.  The precise date of the memorial structure on the hill of Magura is not possible to establish. Galerius had two mausolea erected for his mother and himself, near which consecration memorials in the form of mounds were built. 

The consecration memorials were associated with the act of apotheosis, i.e. of the symbolical elevation of a person to the rank of a god. Archaeological evidence shows that the rite included cremation. After Galerius’s death in 311, life went on in the palace, but without imperial ceremoniousness.

Some towers belonging to the system of fortifications were converted into agglomerations of workshops producing objects necessary for the life of the new inhabitants of the palace. Archaeological evidence from the fourth century and the first half of the fifth century indicates that Romuliana was an important settlement at that time, perhaps even the residence of some eminent person from the court.

The middle of the fifth century was a period of great destruction and fires, probably caused by the invasion of the Huns. In the course of the second half of the fifth century and in the sixth century Romuliana was rebuilt, but its earlier beauty was irretrievably lost. The buildings constructed at that time were of more modest dimensions and rather poorly built.

It was probably then that the east gate was  completely abandoned, and the west gate began to be used as the main entranceway. Numerous elements of sculpted architectural decoration from Galerius’s palace and the temples were secondarily used as building material.