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| Remains of the city walls of Æmona. |
Colonia Iulia Æmona
On the territory of the
present Ljubljana, the Romans built first a military encampment around
the year 50 BC in an territory that was already populated by ancient
settlers of uncertain origin. In 14-15 AD a Roman castrum was founded
and called Colonia Iulia Æmona - Emona or Æmona for short - possibly by the XV Legio Apollinaris (theory proposed by the noted
historian and epigraphy expert Balduin Saria). Its location
overlaps with the Southwest part of the old nucleus of the modern city
of Ljubljana, capital of present-day Slovenia, where numerous remains
of Emona can still be seen today (substantial parts of the ancient
city walls, most of which were destroyed in 1963, several mosaics,
parts of the paleochristian baptistry, residential houses, statues,
tombstones etc.).
As a strategic stronghold
playing an important role in numerous wars, Emona was fortified with
strong walls. It had a population of 5,000 to 6,000 people, mostly
merchants and craftsmen, including a number of government officials and
war veterans. Its streets were paved. The houses were brick built,
centrally heated and connected to a public sewage system. Their walls were
plastered and painted in different colours, and their floors covered in
mosaics. Emona was, among other things, an important Early Christian
centre [see Letters 11 and
12 of
St. Jerome] with a
flourishing trade. It had its own goddess, Equrna, worshipped at the
Ljubljana Marshes.
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| Reconstruction
map of Emona. |
The town was situated on the
flat terrain of the so called Ljubljana Gate, a natural passage
between the Castle Hill (Grad) and the Šišenski hrib hill, and an
important transit route from Central Europe to the Mediterranean.
The ground plan of the town of Emona was rectangular, measuring 523
by 435 metres. It was divided by a grid of five or seven
perpendicular streets called cardines and decumani, and fortified
with a town wall with a number of towers and a moat. Underneath the
streets there was the cloaca, the city's system of large sewer pipes
discharging into the Ljubljanica river. The town fell into decline
around the year 600 AD, with the arrival of Slavs, who started the
settlement which subsequently developed into the medieval Ljubljana. Æmona was, along with Nauportus, Celeia
and Poetovio, one of the main cities on the eastern coast of the
Adriatic. Formerly, it was assumed to have been a part of the Roman
province of Pannonia. However, recent research seems to indicate that
Æmona was actually the easternmost city of the Roman empire proper.
After few months of occupation in 388,
the citizens of Æmona saluted Emperor Theodosius I entering the liberated city
after the victorious Battle of the Save where Theodosius I defeated the army
of Roman usurper Magnus Maximus.
In 452, Æmona was virtually destroyed by
the
Huns, led by
Attila. Its remaining inhabitants fled the city; some of them made it
to the coast of Istria where they founded a "second Emona", Æmonia, now
the town of Novigrad
(It. Cittanova, meaning "New City"), in the part of Istria
that is now in Croatia.
The Remains of the Early Christian
centre
The Early Christian Centre was situated
on one of the Roman Emona's building plots, which usually measured
from 3,000 to 3,600 square metres and were demarcated by four roads.
The Centre was located in the vicinity of the Forum and the western
town wall, the remains of which have been preserved in the Erjavčeva
cesta road over the way from the Cankarjev dom cultural and congress
centre. Like most of the houses in Emona, the building, which has been
referred to by archaeologists as Insula No. 32, was originally private
property and was only later converted into a public complex. The
remains of the building's foundations and its pavement date from the
1st century AD, the period when the town had been originally built.
The first extensive renovation of the building took place at the
beginning of the 4th century. The renovated pavement and the newly
built pools indicate that the building was turned into public baths.
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Remains of the
town centre, Aemona (above and detail below) |
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In the second half of the 4th century,
a colour mosaic featuring Early Christian symbols was laid along the
northern façade of the building. According to written sources, at the
beginning of the 5th century the building was renovated and converted
into a parish complex. The renovation included the installation of
central heating. A rectangular baptistery with a small pool was built
by the central courtyard, and south of it a large portico (covered
walk) with a colour mosaic, which has been sufficiently preserved to
reveal the name of its maker, Archdeacon Antiochus. The parish complex
was pulled down at a time unknown.
The remains of the main northern
gate
Located beneath the present Slovenska
cesta road is the old Roman main road (via Gemina) which used to connect the town
of Emona with the provinces of Norik and Pannonia. On view in the
passageway beneath the Slovenska cesta road, just off the Kongresni
trg square, is a restored part of the Northern Town Gate. The premises
where the remnants of the ramparts, a tower and the entrance are
situated, currently house the Bukvarna antiquarian bookshop. Due to
its position, the Northern Town Gate was probably the most exposed
entrance to the town of Emona, which therefore saw a number of
important historical events.
The Roman wall at the Mirje District
According to an inscription found next
to the eastern town gate of Emona, which was located at the present
site of the Trg francoske revolucije square, the Emona town wall was
built between the years 14 and 15 AD. Measuring 2.4 metres wide and
from 6 to 8 metres high, it was built around the town centre in the
shape of a regular rectangular. Included in the wall were at least 26
towers and four main entrances. The town was on the northern, southern
and western sides additionally secured by double moats, while the
eastern side was naturally secured by the slope of the Castle Hill
descending towards the Ljubljanica river.
The wall shell was built from carved
stone slabs bound with mortar, while the core of the wall consisted of
a conglomerate of river pebbles, smaller rocks, sand and lime. The
wall structure was so solid and robust that certain parts of the wall
survived for as long as 2,000 years. The inside of the wall shell is
visible in the Mirje district, where the part of the wall to the south
of the main southern gate is located. Some of the side gates were for
security reasons walled up already back in Roman times to ward the
invading barbarian tribes off the town. One of the preserved gates of
the kind makes the part of the western wall situated in the Mirje
district.
The Roman Wall complex in the Mirje
district was during the 1930s renovated by architect Jože Plečnik. His
works at the complex include the stone pyramid, the wall
superstructure, the entrances to the arched vault, which was on the
outside covered in stone remnants of the Roman buildings found in the
vicinity of the wall, and the park stretching alongside the inner part
of the wall. Also the colonnade situated next to the main southern
gate is of non-Roman origin. Another renovation of the Roman Wall took
place in the 1990s.
The northern burial ground and the
statue of the Emonian
 Situated
just off the Slovenska cesta road, next to the entrance to the
passageway between the Kongresni trg and the Plečnikov trg squares, is
a gilded copy of a bronze statue representing a Roman dignitary. In
Roman times a burial ground stood in the place of the present statue.
Following the Roman tradition, the burial grounds of Emona were
situated outside the town walls. They stretched alongside most of the
main roads leading to town, in the north all the way to the present
Ljubljana Fairgrounds (Gospodarsko razstavišče). The graves were
marked with names engraved on tombstones and sometimes the statues of
the deceased. The Statue of the Emonian is one of the most important
remains of the Roman times ever found in Slovenia.
The original Statue of the Emonian,
which was in 1835 excavated from a site next to the Kazina building,
has been kept at the National Museum of Slovenia. The statue had been
buried together with the cremated remains of the deceased and a number
of objects indicative of the fact that he was a distinguished citizen
of Emona who lived at the beginning of the 2nd century AD, during the
rule of Emperor Trajan. On view next to the column supporting the
statue are a Late Antique sarcophagus and the remains of a wall of a
building.
Sources:
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emona
-
http://www.ljubljana.si/en/sights/roman_ljubljana/default.html
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