Forum in the civilian city

The exact location of the forum in the civilian city was only clearly established a few years ago by using geophysical prospection methods.  In Carnuntum’s heyday this was the centre of public life.  Magnificent buildings – such as the seat of local government, market halls and administrative offices – bordered a generously proportioned square.

The forum was the social, administrative and religious centre of every Roman city.  Buildings of the city administration (curia – conference hall of the district council, municipal offices of the magistrates; tabularium – archive), a basilica for the dispensing of justice, and the temple of the Capitolinian Trias (capitolium) were grouped around a large square surrounded by columned halls.  The forum was usually situated at the crossroads of the two main streets in the city (decumanus and cardo), and with its lavish architecture was the city’s showpiece.                                                                                                                                                                                

Carnuntum’s forum was investigated from 1996 onwards using geoelectric resistance, magnetometer and radar measurements.  It is situated south of the “large public baths” in Petronell Castle’s former “Tiergarten” on terrain that slopes down towards the Danube.  The complex measures 142 x 65 metres and has three parts.  A row of shops with single-pitch roofs adjoins the basilica facing the decumanus in the north.  To the south is the extensive 1800 sq. metre forum square, with two-storey porticos on the longer sides.  In the centre was a temple which was probably the  capitolium, flanked by two municipal offices on either side.  All three formed separate buildings.  The rooms in the south would have been tabernae, the others were perhaps used as orderly rooms and for archives.

Since no excavations have been carried out, the complex can only be dated hypothetically.  The building was very probably erected in the reign of Emperor Hadrian (117–138 AD), when the legionary city was raised to the status of a municipium.