Painted Vaulted Mausoleum, Viminacium
About
The trapezoidal underground tomb visitors descend into today, its walls covered in fresco painting blending Eastern and classicizing styles, is dated by art-historical analysis to around the start of the 4th century. That places it nearly two centuries after this map's snapshot, so it does not belong on the 117 CE map despite being Viminacium's best-known burial monument. Its scale shows how much grander the necropolis became under the later empire.
What happened here
The tomb is built where the traffic is: on the road out of town, facing the carriageway, close enough to read at walking pace. That is the design brief. Inside there may be a single chamber for one family or niches for dozens, with cremation urns or, increasingly, bodies laid out. Outside there is a portrait, an inscription giving the dead their offices and their years, and often a bench, because visitors come back. The family returns on the anniversary and at the February festival of the dead, brings wine and food, and eats a meal at the graveside. Endowments are left to keep it up and lawsuits follow when they are not honoured. A grand tomb is the last public building a family gets to commission.
Sources
Nearby
Roman Maps shows the empire frozen at 11 August 117 CE, the day Trajan died — its moment of greatest territorial extent. Explore the full map →