City Walls of Sirmium
About
Legio XIII Gemina raised Sirmium's first rampart, a stretch of earth and timber fronted by a ditch, when the settlement won status as Colonia Flavia Sirmium under the Flavian emperors. Masons rebuilt the circuit in stone by the early 2nd century as the colony grew into the city Trajan chose as capital of Pannonia Inferior around 103. Its later Tetrarchic replacement lies to the south, encasing the 4th-century imperial palace instead.
What happened here
A town wall is a claim as much as a defence. It is faced in stone, cored with rubble and concrete, and pierced by gates that are more decorated than the rest of it put together. Towers project so that anyone at the base can be shot from the side. In most of the empire in this century the walls are old, unmanned, and half built over — shops lean against them and houses are cut into them — because the frontier is a long way off and the danger is not here. On the frontier itself a wall is something else entirely: a continuous barrier with ditches, gates at intervals, patrol tracks and manned turrets, built to control movement rather than to stop an army.
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 →