Athena Review Image Archive: Lower Danube: The main street (cardo) at Roman Oescus

Athena Review Image Archive ^™

Lower Danube: The main street (cardo) at Roman Oescus

Ulpia Oescus, the only city to have achieved the status of a Roman colonia in Lower Moesia (today's northern Bulgaria), lies 3 km south of the confluence of the Danube and the river Iskar, from which the town got its name. Oescus saw its fortunes shift through the centuries. Today, due to the combined efforts of archaeology and history, it has brought forth some surprising discoveries.

The inside of Oescus is divided into two unequal parts, with the northern section comprising two-thirds of the town's area. The Cardo, running north-south, was one of the two largest streets, along with the east-west Decumanus. To the west of the temple of Fortuna, the Cardo is relatively intact, and reveals a good surviving example of the Roman sewer system that ran beneath the streets (Fig.1).

[Fig.1: The Cardo and its sewer system west of the Temple of Fortuna in Ulpia Oescus (T. Ivanov 1987).]

Athena Review Image Archive™ | Guide to Archaeology on the Internet | free trial issue | subscribe | back issues