Roman sites in Switzerland
Roman Remains in Nyon
Little remains of Nyon’s Roman past. Apart from the Roman museum, a few Roman items can be seen around Nyon. Some decorative stones were used in later buildings but the most visual are the pillars erected above Parc du Bourg-de-Rive. These three pillars (well two and a third pillars) were discovered buried horizontally in old town Nyon and moved to overlook Lake Geneva in 1958. Here, they can easily be seen by travelers ...Lausanne-Vidy Roman Ruins
Lousonna was a Gallo-Roman port during Roman times. The port town was important for commerce with links on Lake Geneva to Roman towns such as the present-day Geneva, Nyon, and Villeneuve. However, during Roman times, Lausanne was never of political or military importance. Although borders shifted, Lausanne was mostly a backwater at the southern most parts of Germania, ruled from Mainz. Political and military power in the ...Avenches Amphitheatre
Avenches (earlier known as Aventicum) became the capital of the Roman Helvetia province around 15-13 BC. The heyday of the city was in the 2nd century AD when it had over 20,000 inhabitants. The amphitheatre was also erected in the early 2th century. Today it is Switzerland's best preserved amphitheatre.Augusta Raurica
Augusta Raurica is a Roman archaeological site and an open-air museum in Switzerland located on the south bank of the Rhine river about 20 km east of Basel near the villages of Augst and Kaiseraugst. It is the oldest known Roman colony on the Rhine. Ancient history Augusta Raurica was founded by Lucius Munatius Plancus around 44 BC in the vicinity of a local Gallic tribe, the Rauraci, relatives of ...Vitudurum
Vitudurum is the name of a Roman Vicus, those remains are located in Oberwinterthur, a locality of the municipality of Winterthur. The majority of the remains of commercial, residential, religious and public buildings are situated around the St. Arbogast church. Vitudurum was established nearby productive resources and a prehistorican route from Lake Geneva to Lake Constance in the late first century BC or early f ...Irgenhausen Castrum
Irgenhausen Castrum is a Roman fort situated on Pfäffikersee lake shore. It was a square fort, measuring 60 metres in square, with four corner towers and three additional towers. The remains of a stone wall in the interior were probably a spa. In the Roman era, there was a Roman road from Centum Prata (Kempraten) on Obersee–Lake Zürich via Vitudurum (Oberwinterthur) to Tasgetium (Eschenz) on the Rhin ...Windisch Roman Amphitheatre
The Roman amphitheatre in Windisch was built in the first half of the 1st century AD in the immediate vicinity of the Roman legion camp Vindonissa. It is the largest ancient amphitheatre in Switzerland. During the reign of Emperor Tiberius (14 to 37 AD), when the Legio XIII Gemina was stationed in Vindonissa, a first wooden amphitheatre was built. It was destroyed by fire around 45 AD. The camp was rebuilt of st ...Featured Historic Landmarks, Sites & Buildings
Historic Site of the week
Naveta d'Es Tudons
The Naveta d"Es Tudons is the most remarkable megalithic chamber tomb in the Balearic island of Menorca.
In Menorca and Majorca there are several dozen habitational and funerary naveta complexes, some of which similarly comprise two storeys. Navetas are chronologically pre-Talaiotic constructions.
The Naveta d"Es Tudons served as collective ossuary between 1200 and 750 BC. The lower chamber was for stashing the disarticulated bones of the dead after the flesh had been removed while the upper chamber was probably used for the drying of recently placed corpses. Radiocarbon dating of the bones found in the different funerary navetas in Menorca indicate a usage period between about 1130-820 BC, but the navetas like the Naveta d"Es Tudons are probably older.
The shape of the Naveta d"Es Tudons is that of a boat upside down, with the stern as its trapezoidal façade and the bow as its rounded apse. Its groundplan is an elongated semicircle. Externally, the edifice is 14.5 m long by 6.5 m wide and 4.55 m high but it would originally have been 6 m high.
The front, side walls and apse of the edifice consist of successive horizontal corbelled courses of huge rectangular or square limestone blocks dressed with a hammer and fitted together without mortar, with an all-round foundation course of blocks of even greater size laid on edge.