Trajan's Trophy

As is commonly known, Emperor Trajan's achievements will be erected by a tall column erected in his honor in the Eternal City. However, not many people know, that an equally impressive monument was erected to Trajan in a remote province on the outskirts of the Roman Empire.

In the southern part of Dobruja, near the route connecting Bulgarian Silista with Konstanca, among the limestone ones, Romanian archaeologists discovered sunburnt hills in the 19th century. huge ruins. The area was full of stone slabs, capital column, keystones and remains of sculptures. A few kilometers from the ruins, the walls of a powerful Roman stronghold were found, a dead city with temples, thermal baths and circus.

Scattered fragments were dug up, has been collected and reconstructed for decades. It turned out, that the ruins are the remains of the huge Tropaeum Traiani monument, built in the years 106-109 to commemorate the victory won by the Roman legions in the bloody one, fierce battle over the army of the Daks and their allies Roksolan and Sarmatians. The outcome of the battle largely determined the fate of the last Dacian War..

Tropaeum Traiani was the largest Roman monument outside Italy. On its top rose a huge figure of the victorious Roma. The cylindrical plinth was surrounded by bas-reliefs (metoples illustrating the different phases of the battle and the whole) Campaign. The height of the monument from the base to the top was 40 m.

With the passage of time, the monument lay in ruins. During the period of Turkish rule, the local population called this place Adamclisi, that is “stone man” (an allusion to the fallen figure). The mystery of the name prompted scholars to become interested in the area.

Fortified military camps were regularly located on the Roman border lines and along the Danube in Dobrogea within one day's march., usually housing barracks for a cohort of soldiers. However, the stronghold near Tropaeum Traiani was surrounded by walls similar to the Aurelian fortifications of Rome, and the fortress housed the entire legion. It was not about guarding the monument, but to guard the route through Dobruja from the north to the southern provinces. Around it grew populous, wealthy city, which only emptied with the fall of the Roman Empire, Almost until the last decades, the entry of wandering barbarian peoples to the Mediterranean Sea was defended here.