Porta Principalis Dextra, gate of the Apulum legionary fortress, Alba Iulia, Legio XIII Gemina base · Wikimedia Commons

Fortress of Legio XIII Gemina (Apulum)

Castra Apulum

FortDacia · Alba Iulia, RomaniaBuilt 106 CE

About

Legio XIII Gemina stayed behind in newly conquered Dacia after Trajan's Second Dacian War, founding its fortress at Apulum, modern Alba Iulia, in 106-108 CE and becoming the province's senior garrison. Enclosing roughly 37 hectares behind walls some 750 by 500 meters, it ranks as the largest legionary fortress ever built in Romania. Excavations in its southeastern sector in 2010 uncovered a bronze breastplate scratched with a graffito of the goddess Victoria, alongside stamped roof tiles naming individual soldiers of the legion, the first such personal epigraphy found in Dacia. The fortress remained Dacia's principal legionary base through 117 CE, even as detachments were pulled away for Trajan's simultaneous Parthian campaign of 115-117.

What happened here

A legionary fortress holds five thousand men and is laid out to the same plan everywhere, so a transferred soldier knows his way around on the first day. Two main streets cross at the headquarters building, where the standards and the pay chest are kept in a sunken strongroom under guard. Around it: the commander's house with a courtyard garden, granaries raised on stone piers, a hospital, workshops, and long barrack blocks divided into rooms for eight men who cook and mess together. Training is daily, and building work is constant — soldiers make their own bricks, tiles and boots. A civilian town grows against the walls, with bars, traders and the unofficial families of men who are not legally allowed to marry.