Burgus Au-Hard
Coordinates: 47 ° 32 '52 " N , 7 ° 38' 41" E ; CH1903: six hundred and fifteen thousand five hundred and nine / 266,357
The Roman watchtower Burgus Au-Hard in the Hardwald in Muttenz (therefore also called watchtower Muttenz) is still preserved today with its floor plan at a height of approx. 1.5 meters.
location
It is located in the northern foothills of the Hardwald on the left (west) of the Upper Rhine, two kilometers north of Muttenz. The ruin is located approx. 250 m from the Rhine on an elevated bank terrace and is easiest to reach by walking the signposted hiking path up the Rhine at the Waldhaus restaurant in Muttenz for approx. 10 minutes.
research
The watchtower was probably built in the years after 370 AD. Its slightly rhombic ground plan and the external dimensions of 8.5 by 8.6 meters are characteristic of the late Roman border fortifications on the Upper Rhine.
The discovery of the late Roman complex goes back to the Basel lawyer and historian Daniel Bruckner (1707–1781). He “discovered one of these towers and had it cleared of all rubble and dug it inside out to the ground with the authority of the authorities”, as he writes in his “Oddities of the Basel landscape”. The walls of the watchtower, which were covered over again over time, were dug up and examined again by the Basel City Forestry Office between 1891 and 1921. The watchtower was preserved in 1975 by the canton archeology of the canton of Basel-Landschaft and made accessible to the public.