Viminacium

At the outskirts of the village of Kostolac at the confluence of the Mlava and the Danube there is Viminacium, one of the most important Roman villages in Serbia. The fortified place constructed in 86, it benefited the status of a municipality under the emperor Hadrian in 128, thereafter it became a Roman colony under Gordian in 240. An important commercial place. Viminacium had got the authorisation to coin its own currency.

Today the site is limited enough even if it had been estimated that in the II century it occupied a surface area of 450 hectares. One may visit the remnants of the town trenches and the castrum, but here have been visible the foundations of the Roman houses from III century with the chimneys of red bricks. More interesting has been a necropolis with an excavation decorated by the frescos unearthed in the village of Drmno. The coloured frescos representing the peacocks, the reindeers or the horsemen attacked by lions could be seen. The surprising colours of silver blue or dark tan have been embellishing the facades. Around these remnants more than 2000 Roman tombs had been found. Near Viminacium a skeleton of a woman about the age of thirty had been unearthed in 1986. She had been buried with her personal things and the body had been dressed in a woollen shirt under an embroidered robe, and on her feet the leather shoes and the woollen stockings.

The Museum of Pozarevac has been conserving the copies of the statues and of sarcophagi found in Viminacium, as well as the cooked earth found in this site. For the very complicated office hours consult the site: www.museum-po.org.yu.