September 7, 2011-Augusta Raurica (Wednesday morning)

Today was our first completely solo day ... And we had great fun maneuvering on our own.

We rode the train from Basel to Augusta Raurica to see the ruins of an old Roman city.  The town was only a few kilometers up the Rhein from central Basel.  You might even say we were in the Basel suburbs.  At one time, Augusta Raurica was home to more than 10,000 people and is the oldest known Roman settlement on the Rhein.  Some buildings have been excavated and/or restored, but are scattered over quite a distance throughout the current city, as you can see from this map.

Fewer people speak English away from the large tourist areas, so we ended up taking the long way and got a bit lost trying to find the museum, but looking around the town was fun too.  We actually found the ruins of a bath first, then followed some little signs to a Roman column in a garden and a few other things.  James eventually found a post office with an outdoor map of the city and figured out where the museum was located.  The city had lots of signs up, pointing the way to the museum ... we just missed them.

The museum had an interesting collection from a silver trove.  When the fortune was first uncovered, it's significance was not recognized and many pieces were collected by locals or thrown away!  The valuables had been buried by their owners when they feared, correctly as it tuns out, that the town was about to be invaded.

There was also a replica of a traditional Roman home, with explanations in multiple languages ... luckily for us English was one of those languages!  Most of the signs on the archaeological sites were in German and French only ...

 

The theater had a modern sound system installed and looked like it had been used for an event recently.  They even have a web cam!

Across from the theatre were the remains of Temple on Schonbuhl. We had seen what was probably the key to the temple door in the museum earlier.  This Roman temple to Jupiter was built over an even older Celtic temple ...

We then embarked on a trek to see even more.  Pretty soon we came across the ruins of the town's Amphitheatre.  These ruins had been hidden on the top of a hill by forest ... and were even missed when anti-tank fortifications were built during World War II.

 

 Next on the switch backed trail was the Sanctuary on Grienmatt.  We had to leave the trail and walk through a pasture to get to these ruins.  Experts are not sure who this structure was devoted to ... statues of more than one deity have been found here.  Some think it may have been a water temple, since the remains of a spa have been uncovered at the site.

 The trail took us back to the museum, just as 2 tour buses full of tourists pulled up. We ducked into the area next to the museum and looked at the collection of Roman grave markers.  It is amazing to think of the lives these people lived. It makes me realize how short life is in the scheme of things.  These people have been dead for thousands of years ...

This is an anti-tank barrier left over from World War II.  You can still see lines of these throughout Switzerland today.  The Swiss knew that Hitler planned to return and conquer them, despite their neutrality, once he had taken England.  He had called Switzerland a "prickly hedgehog" and chose to sidestep the country temporarily, knowing it would be difficult to conquer with it's mountainous terrain.

Near the museum again, we saw the remains of a small workshop.  The next site of interest was the location of the main Forum.  A temple to Jupiter, a basilica and the Curia remains are also nearby.  It was interesting to see how the people of the town re-used the older Roman buildings and ruins over the years.  The fountain below has been modernized and much of the detailed stonework has been moved to different locations and reused. 

 

 

            

There was a collection of ancient ceramic tile panels, found in Roman homes throughout the area, available for viewing in the basement of the Curia.  This area also contained tables set up for classes and meetings.  The Curia was used during the middle ages as the local city hall.

              

The remains of a well house and bath house were also interesting.  The photographs I took in the well house didn't turn out ... you could look up the well shaft to see the sky!

 

How the locals lost and re-found some of the ruins was interesting.  It was a bit frustrating to see that so much of the original building material was gone, having been repeatedly reused for newer construction over the centuries.  Some blocks of stone have even been crushed for use as gravel.  Many of the ruins we saw had actually been reconstructed using new stones and modern mortar.