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(develop an en: article on the Legionary Camps/Fortresses at Neuss)

Novaesium
Ground plan of the stone-built 'Koenenlager' Roman legionary fortress. The plan is from Koenen's excavations of 1887-1900.
Novaesium is now within the city of Neuss, on the left bank of the Rhine, in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany
Type	Multiple legionary camps and fortress
Founded	16 BCE or earlier
Abandoned	4th century CE
Attested by	Tacitus, Antonine Itinerary, Tabula Peutingeriana
Place in the Roman world
Province	Germania Inferior
Limes	Lower Germanic Limes
Nearby water	Rhine
Directly connected to	Cologne/Trier and Xanten/the North Sea
Structure
— stone structure —
Built during the reign of	Claudius
Built	mid-1st century
Size and area	570 m × 420 m (25 ha)
Shape	Oblong
— timber structure —
Built during the reign of	Augustus, Tiberius
Built	16BCE to 43CE
Shape	Multiple overlapping polygonal camps of varying sizes
Construction technique	earth and wood
Stationed military units
— Legions —
XX Valeria victrix, XVI Gallica, VI victrix, and others.
— Alae —
Possibly Afrorum veterana from 100AD
Location
Coordinates	51.183889°N 6.721944°E / 51.183889; 6.721944
Place name	Gnadental
Town	Neuss
State	North Rhine-Westphalia
Country	Germany
Reference
UNESCO	List 1631, inscribed in 2021 Listed monument BD 04/06
Site notes
Recognition	UNESCO World Heritage Site
Discovery year	1886
Condition	Entirely below ground, mostly now built over.
Excavation dates	1887-1900, 1953-1980
Archaeologists	Constantin Koenen (1854-1929), Gustav Müller (1921-1988), Michael Gechter (1946-2018)
Website	www.novaesium.de/ (in German)

Novaesium

Novaesium was the Roman name for the successive legionary camps alongside the Rhine from the late 1st century BCE to the 4th century CE. Initially built as a succession of earth and timber camps with the legionaries living in tents, in around 43 CE a large legionary fortress was begun, which was progressively fortified with stone walls, gates, and turrets, along with more permenant barracks, officers' quarters and administrative buildings. This shift from temporary to permenant structures is now taken as an emblem of the way Roman military strategy shifted from continual territorial expansion to a de facto defended line, known as the Limes, defining the limits of the Roman Empire.

The foundations of the stone fortress were discovered by Koenen in the late 19th century on the southern edge of what is now the city of Neuss. When excavated it was the first complete groundplan of a legionary fortress, and came to epitomise how a Claudian era fortress would look. Further excavations in the 1950s to 1980s revealed progressively more complex precurser camps to the west of Koenen's excavations, leaving a chronology and terminology which remains to some extent unresolved. The whole site was developed for housing as the excavations progressed, limiting the scope for subsequent discovery or clarification. In 2021 the site was included within the Lower Germanic Limes UNESCO World Heritage Site, a series of 102 locations along the Rhine Valley from south of Bonn (Germany) to the North Sea coast (the Netherlands).

Historical writings and events

Novaesium is well attested within classical writings, both as a place name and establishing its location. Tacitus mentions it in ten different passages of his Histories, describing troop movements, retreats, battles, defections and defeats during the turbulent year of 69 CE. Legio I Germanica had been stationed variously at Cologne, Novaesium and Bonn since 16 BCE and had been caught up in the mutiny of 14 CE. Legio XVI Gallica were stationed in Novaesium from 43 to 70 CE. During 69 CE, the Year of the Four Emperors, in the turmoil following Nero's reign, parts of both legions had marched on Rome in support of Vitellius, and subsequently were both disbanded the following year after their inability to deal with the Revolt of the Batavi.

The Legio XX Valeria Victrix were at Novaesium until they joined Claudius's invasion of Britain in 43 CE and Legio VI Victrix was the legion brought in to Novaesium to replace the two disbanded legions in 69/70, until they were relocated to Xanten some time around the end of the first century, when the legionary fortress was abandoned.

Novaesium is also named in the Antonine Itinerary of around 200 CE, on the map known as the Tabula Peutingeriana from around 300 CE and in Ammianus Marcellinus's History written in 359, showing that as a settlement it retained its significance after the legions had left. The site of the fortress was re-used for a much smaller Auxillary fort, probably housing a Cavelry unit (ala) for the next 200 years. The gravestone of a rider from the ala Afrorum veterana was found in Neuss and is dated around 100.

The 'Nivisium castellum' is also mentioned by Gregory of Tours. Around 575 he wrote Book II of his History of the Franks and section 9, quoting a now lost work by Sulpicius Alexander about events in 388, tells of how "Quintinus crossed the Rhine with his army near the stronghold of Neuss, and at his second camp from the river he found dwellings abandoned by their occupants and great villages deserted. For the Franks pretended to be afraid and retired into the more remote tracts, where they built an abattis on the edge of the woods." The Romans were subsequently trapped in the woods and marshes where "the ranks were thrown into disorder and the legions cut in pieces."

Antiquarians and Archaeologists

A variety of Roman artifacts had been found in the town through the 17th and 18th centuries, including two gravestones belonging to the XX and XVI Legions and one placed by a veteran of an auxiliary unit. In 1839 the first Neuss antiquities association was formed by a Prussian medical officer, Dr. Hermann Joseph Jaeger. In 1844 they carried out excavations at Reckburg, discovering a small Roman fort, and in 1845 the Neuss Municipal Museum was begun, to display the growing quantity of finds.

Fresh energy was injected in 1877 when a new generation of enthusiatic archaeologists founded the 'Vereins für Altertumskunde und Geschichte' (Association for Antiquities and History), whose members included Oskar Rautert and the 23 year old Constantin Koenen. After further work at the Reckburg excavations, attention was turned to the location of the legionary fortress, which had been asumed to be beneath the old town centre. Koenen pursued a theory that it was to the south of the town, and in 1886 got permission from the Bonn Provincial Museum to make a test excavation on open ground towards the area where the Rhine is joined by the river Erft. The findings were positive, and over the next 13 years Koenen worked to reveal the whole of the groundplan of the legionary fortress. Although there had been no above-ground indications, it was found that the foundation levels were well-preserved. To reveal the 25 hectares (62 acres) site the excavation team had to remove some 50,000 cubic meters/yards of overlying soil using shovels and wheelbarrows. The result was that for the first time, a full groundplan of a Legionary fortress was known, and when the final results were published in 1904

Heinz Birkenheuer. "The legionary fortress at Neuss 43-105 A.D. Reconstruction of the second - stone - phase". Castrum Novaesium. Retrieved 1 July 2024.

Tretola Martinez, Debora C (2021). "News from Neuss? A renewed presentation of the oldest amphorae from the military site of Novaesium". Journal of Roman Archaeology. 34. Cambridge University Press: 460–469. doi:10.1017/S1047759421000210. being a review of Cesteros, González H.; Millet, P. Berni (2018). Roman Amphorae in Neuss: Augustan to Julio-Claudian Contexts. Roman and Late Antique Mediterranean Pottery 12. Oxford: Archaeopress.

Present-day settings for the archaeological sites

UNESCO World Heritage Site

"Archaeological monument 04/06: Römisches Legionslager Novaesium und römisches Auxiliarlager" (PDF). Denkmalliste der Stadt Neuss, Teil B - Bodendenkmäler (List of Monuments of the city of Neuss, Part B, Archaeological monuments). Retrieved 24 June 2024.