Venta Icenorum

The north wall

Aerial view of the city area
Webaviation
Link to the picture (please note copyrights )

Venta Icenorum was a Roman city in Britain in what is now Norfolk . It was the capital of the civitas of the Celtic tribe of the Iceni . Although the Iceni had a certain importance in pre-Roman times and the Boudicca rebellion took place among them , there are no remains of a Celtic city that clearly demonstrate settlement at this time.

Venta Icenorum is now partly built over by Caistor St. Edmund (also Caistor-by-Norwich), a village with approx. 270 inhabitants. Various excavations and aerial photography provide a relatively good picture of the ancient city. The place was probably initially laid out quite generously, but was reduced in size after the uprising of the Boudicca. Venta Icenorum received a city map in Flavian times with streets crossing at right angles. In the north, however, some of these do not follow this pattern, so that it was assumed that this part goes back to pre-Roman times.

In the center of the city stood the forum , where two construction phases could be distinguished. It was built in the Antonine era and may have replaced an older structure. It consisted of an inner square of approx. 30 × 30 m, which was flanked by colonnades , and a basilica on the west side. A bath was found in the west of the city and an amphitheater could be located in the south, outside the city walls, on aerial photographs. The forum and bath burned down at the end of the second or the beginning of the third century. The forum was only rebuilt after a while. To the north of the forum, two Romano-Celtic temples stood in the adjacent insula. A third temple stood to the north, outside the city walls. The city walls were eventually erected in the third century, with large parts of the built-up city remaining outside the walls.

Little is known of the city's residential development. Many houses seem to have been simple wooden structures, others were built in stone. Overall, the place doesn't appear to have been very wealthy. Above all, there are no mosaics . There are also hardly any stone inscriptions from this place. The city was abandoned in the fifth century and not repopulated for a long time.

literature

• John Wacher: The Towns of Roman Britain , Routledge, London / New York 1997, pp. 243-255 ISBN 0-415-17041-9

Web links

Commons : Venta Icenorum  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Venta Icenorum (Eng.)

Coordinates: 52 ° 35 ′ 0.6 ″  N , 1 ° 17 ′ 27.2 ″  E