Traces of the Roman past can be found at various places in the Budapest district of Óbuda, but they are especially impressive at Aquincum
Today the excavation site is open to the public and the most valuable finds are exhibited in a small museum. The remains of the garrison, which preceded the civil settlement, lie a little closer to the city centre, near Flórian tér (Óbuda). The garrison and settlement extended almost all the way to Gellért Hill, and also covered the Danube island at Aquincum, as well as the east bank of the Danube, where the Romans built the fortification Contra-Aquincum close to today’s Elizabeth Bridge (Március 15. tér). The Romans conquered Transdanubia around the year 10 BC and established the province of Pannonia. A few years after the birth of Christ, they founded a garrison on the terrain of Budapest’s present-day district of Óbuda, around which the city of Aquincum soon developed. This flourishing settlement was already the provincial capital of Pannonia Inferior by the beginning of the 2nd century AD. During its heyday in the first half of the 3rd century AD, around 50,000 people lived in Aquincum. Emperor Septimius Severus raised the city to the status of a Colonia in AD 194. Aquincum’s decline came after the defeat of the Roman legions at Hadrianopolis and Roman withdrawal from Pannonia in AD 378, and was accelerated by increasingly severe invasions by the Huns.
