De Monumentaliteit van het Castellum Alphen aan den Rijn-Albaniana

The Dutch Limes is well-known and runs from Katwijk in the west, to Nijmegen in the south-east, where it runs across the Dutch border. Located along this Limes were castella, small Roman forts. It has always been assumed that the Dutch castella were undecorated structures with no monumental appearance, but now new evidence might change this traditional view. During excavations in 1998 a large number of tuff stone blocks were found at the Roman castellum Albaniana at Alphen aan den Rijn, that were decorated with trims, and it included one stone that seemed to have been a half column, plus one stone with an alcove, indicating that these stones must have been part of a building with a monumental appearance. The question is now: which building did they belong to, and how where they incorporated in it? There were several options: the blocks could have been part of a gate, the porta principalis dextra, or of the bathhouse, or it could have been part of a monumental entrance to the...Show moreThe Dutch Limes is well-known and runs from Katwijk in the west, to Nijmegen in the south-east, where it runs across the Dutch border. Located along this Limes were castella, small Roman forts. It has always been assumed that the Dutch castella were undecorated structures with no monumental appearance, but now new evidence might change this traditional view. During excavations in 1998 a large number of tuff stone blocks were found at the Roman castellum Albaniana at Alphen aan den Rijn, that were decorated with trims, and it included one stone that seemed to have been a half column, plus one stone with an alcove, indicating that these stones must have been part of a building with a monumental appearance. The question is now: which building did they belong to, and how where they incorporated in it? There were several options: the blocks could have been part of a gate, the porta principalis dextra, or of the bathhouse, or it could have been part of a monumental entrance to the principia, the Roman headquarters. When we look at the location where the stones were found, they were found closest to the entrance gate, the porta principalis dextra, which indicates that they did actually belong to this gate. However, two of the main blocks, the stone with the alcove and the half column were found in a different location. It is unclear however from the excavation reports, exactly where these were found. Thus it is possible that these two blocks belonged to a different building, for example the bathhouse. However it is presumed that these blocks did actually belong to the porta principalis dextra and using these blocks a simple reconstruction has been made to show that Dutch castella did actually have buildings with a monumental appearance.Show less

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De Monumentaliteit van het Castellum Alphen aan den Rijn-Albaniana