Felix Romuliana

Galerius, the Roman emperor who ruled at the start of the fourth century, built this palace complex near his birthplace and named it after his mother Romula. It is a fortified rectangle with massive walls and twenty towers enclosing palaces, temples, baths and a basilica, and on hills nearby are the mausolea and consecration monuments where he and his mother were buried and deified, an arrangement found nowhere else in the Roman world. Mosaic floors survive, including a striking Dionysus panel now displayed in the museum at Zaječar. It sits in open farmland in a quiet part of eastern Serbia and receives very few visitors, so the scale registers without distraction.

History

The emperor Galerius, a tetrarch of Dacian origin and the adopted son and son-in-law of Diocletian, began the complex in 298, after a victory over the Sasanians, to mark his birthplace, and named it after his mother Romula, a priestess of a pagan cult; it served at once as a place to worship her, a monument to his deeds and a luxurious villa. Romuliana lasted until the Huns plundered it in the mid-5th century, then became a modest settlement of farmers and craftsmen, abandoned early in the 7th century as the Slavs arrived. Early explorers took it for a Roman army camp; Baron von Herder described it in 1835 and Felix Kanitz drew its walls in 1860 and 1864; systematic excavation began in 1953 under Vekoslav Popović, and in 1984 an archivolt inscribed FELIX ROMULIANA was found, confirming that this was Galerius's palace (Wikipedia, Gamzigrad).

Highlights

• The fortified walls and towers - the massive enclosure with its twenty towers.
• Mosaic floors - surviving palace pavements, with major panels in the Zaječar museum.
• Magura hill - the mausolea and consecration monuments above the palace.
• The palace complex - temples, baths and residential ranges inside the walls.

When to go

April to October; the site is open and exposed with little shade. Mornings and late afternoons give better light on the walls. It is quiet at almost any time.

Before you go

The site is remote from Serbia's usual routes and needs a car. Much of the interior is foundations, and the best mosaics are in the museum in Zaječar rather than on site, so doing both is necessary to make sense of it. Facilities are minimal and interpretation is limited.

Nearby

Zaječar's museum holds the mosaics; the Timok valley and Rajac wine cellars are nearby.