Monday 9 April 2012

Not London! Köln Roman dig & Praetorium (big post)

It had somehow escaped my notice that Köln was a Roman settlement. This explains a lot about why I love it so much. 


So, the usual story: Romans came along and settled near a river, the city got bigger and developed over time, and with development comes building. And in Köln it seems like anywhere you start to build, you hit Roman remains. 


While we were there, there was an open air dig very close to the Rathaus, which seemed to be a complex of at least a couple of houses (the info board was in German so I couldn't follow the whole thing):





 



On our last day in Köln I also visited the Praetorium, which is housed in a building near this dig. The term Praetorium originally referred to a general's tent within an encampment, and the term then carried over to have an administrative meaning for the headquarters of a governor or emperor. 


This is a photo from inside the Praetorium but sadly I failed to write down when it was taken. Post WW2 maybe




Artefacts inside the Praetorium:


 

 



      


The site:

































And finally, in the Praetorium building there was a section of the Roman sewer system to walk down.





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