Roman Quarter: What Is Ancient and What Is Rebuilt?
Listen at the stop, then read the transcript and follow the sources behind the story.
Listen
Transcript
We are beginning with the part of kar-NOON-toom designed to feel inhabited again.
Before we meet a single Roman, we need to know what kind of place we are standing in.
The reconstructed quarter stands on the original archaeological location. Architecture, heating, room functions and fittings were derived from excavated evidence and years of research. The buildings were reconstructed with extensive use of experimental-archaeology methods rather than simply as stage scenery.
Notice the modern completeness of the buildings, then remember that the archaeological evidence beneath them was fragmentary.
Here the physical experience is modern, but the design is anchored in excavated evidence.
Keep the early fourth century in mind: the reconstructed quarter presents a late phase of a city that had already been growing and rebuilding for centuries.
kar-NOON-toom becomes more interesting when uncertainty is kept visible instead of being filled with invented certainty.
For a visitor, the value is causal rather than chronological: this stop explains why a frontier metropolis needed this particular space, system or institution.
For someone already familiar with kar-NOON-toom, the useful detail is scale: the object in front of you belonged to a network much larger than the surviving ruin.