Saalburg

Geschichte

The Saalburg is a Roman fort located on the main ridge of the Taunus, northwest of Bad Homburg, Hesse, Germany. It is a Cohort Fort belonging to the Limes Germanicus, the Roman linear border fortification of the German provinces. The Saalburg, located just off the main road roughly halfway between Bad Homburg and Wehrheim is the most completely reconstructed Roman fort in Germany. Since 2005, as part of the Upper German limes, it forms part of a UNESCO World Heritage site. In the modern numbering system for the limes, it is ORL 11.History of ResearchThe earliest examinations of the site were undertaken from 1853 to 1862 by the Nassau Antiquarian Society under the direction of Friedrich Gustav Habel (1793–1867). But the great impulse to provincial Roman archaeology in Germany came in 1892, when the Reichs-Limes-Kommission (the Imperial Commission for the Roman borders), then chaired by Theodor Mommsen began to research the course of the Limes Germanicus in its entirety, as well as the location of all its forts. In the course of this enormous project, not completed for decades, intensive exploration of the Saalburg and its surroundings was pursued by the archaeologists charged with this stretch of the limes, Louis Jacobi (1836–1910) and his son and successor Heinrich Jacobi (1855–1946). In 1897, Kaiser Wilhelm II, following a suggestion by L. Jacobi, ordered the reconstruction of the Saalburg fort according to the detailed results of its excavation. As a result, the Saalburg became the most completely reconstructed fort on the entire limes. It also houses the Saalburg Museum, one of the two most important institutions dedicated to the study of the German Limes (the other being the Limesmuseum of Aalen). From 1967 to 1993, the museum was directed by the well-known archaeologist Dietwulf Baatz, whose many publications fostered a broad interest in provincial Roman archaeology well beyond specialist circles.