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Faculty of Arts and HumanitiesInstitute of Archaeology

UNESCO World Heritage Application Lower Germanic Limes – Roman military installations in the city of Cologne

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The external border of the Roman Empire is the largest linear archaeological monument in Europe. Several sections (Hadrian's Wall and Antonine Wall in Great Britain and the Upper Germanic-Raetian Limes in Germany) are already part of the transnational UNESCO World Heritage Site "Borders of the Roman Empire". Preparations are currently underway to apply for this status for the Lower Germanic Limes as well. On this border section, which lies partly in the Netherlands and partly on the German side, the bases of the Lower Germanic army, in which around twenty to forty thousand soldiers served, were lined up along the banks of the Rhine between the North Sea coast and the Vinxtbach in what is now Rhineland-Palatinate over a length of 385 km.

The following three archaeological monuments located in the area of ​​the city of Cologne are part of the UNESCO application:

1) the Praetorium as the seat of the commander-in-chief of the Lower Germanic army

2) the late antique fortress Divitia in Cologne-Deutz

3) the "Alteburg" fort in Cologne-Marienburg, the headquarters of the Roman Rhine fleet

The application for the appointment of the NGL is to be submitted to UNESCO in early 2020; a decision is expected in 2021. The preparatory work initially includes a thorough documentation of the condition of the military facilities and the level of knowledge about them. This is followed by the development and expansion of a protection and maintenance concept in connection with urban and regional development as well as improved access to the individual monuments of the NGL and associated museums under a corporate design. Finally, overarching research questions are to be formulated and discussed, including the Limes foreland and hinterland.

The Archaeology Department of the Roman Provinces has been involved in this preparatory work since April 2017 with a scientist and a student assistant. The main task is to draw up an expert report on the military monuments of the Lower Germanic Limes in the city of Cologne, using all relevant archive documents and previous publications, and - as a distillate of this - to write the part of the World Heritage application relating to Cologne.

Person responsible:

Research assistant:

  • Martin Wieland M.A.

Research assistant:

  • Sandra Rung B.A.

Cooperation partners:

  • Roman-Germanic Museum of the City of Cologne (Dr. Marcus Trier)
  • MiQua. LVR Jewish Museum in the Archaeological Quarter of Cologne (Dr. Thomas Otten)
  • LVR Office for the Preservation of Archaeological Monuments in the Rhineland (Dr. Erich Claßen, Steve Bödecker M.A.)