Archaeologists uncover a 3,000-square-metre Roman commander’s residence on the Danube

Archaeologists from the University of Warsaw have uncovered a 3,000-square-metre residential complex at Novae, a Roman legionary fortress on the southern bank of the Danube in northern Bulgaria, that the excavation’s director believes is the long-sought praetorium, the private residence of the legion’s commanding officer. Unusually low Danube water levels this season exposed riverbank ground normally submerged, giving the Polish-Bulgarian team access to architecture that had never been documented before.

Piotr Dyczek’s case for the praetorium

Professor Piotr Dyczek, who directs the University of Warsaw’s Centre for Research on the Antiquity of Southeastern Europe, has led excavation campaigns at Novae for decades as part of a joint Polish-Bulgarian effort running continuously since 1960. He identified the newly exposed complex as “most likely the praetorium – the residence of the legionary legate who commanded the legion,” a role reserved in the Roman army for a member of the senatorial elite rather than a career soldier promoted through the ranks.

That identification matters because a praetorium of this scale has eluded excavators at Novae for more than sixty years of work on the site. The University of Warsaw’s own Faculty of Archaeology has previously described the building type as typically “richly equipped” and staffed with servants, sometimes housing the commander’s family, a standard the newly exposed complex appears to meet given its scale and finds.

The identification did not come out of nowhere. Fieldwork by University of Warsaw archaeologists Agnieszka Tomas and Emil Jęczmienowski between 2021 and 2024 had already narrowed the search, documenting fourteen stone foundation walls across three trenches in the fortress’s rear sector and a reused inscription naming a legionary legate from Emperor Gordian III’s reign found roughly 50 meters from this year’s exposed walls. That earlier work argued the commander’s residence should sit close behind the fortress’s headquarters building, exactly where this season’s low-water exposure has now put it.

3,000 square metres of decoration and religion

The residential complex covers roughly 3,000 square metres, a footprint HeritageDaily’s report places among the largest domestic structures documented anywhere on the Roman Danube frontier. Painted plaster and multicolored brick flooring recovered from the site point to a level of interior finish well beyond a standard barracks building.

The objects pulled from the complex read like a catalog of a commander’s private and public life at once. Excavators recovered a bronze figurine of Priapus, rare for the Lower Danube region; a head of the god Mithras, whose cult was especially popular among Roman soldiers; two inscribed altars, one nearly complete; and a marble fragment from an imperial portrait, the kind of object that signaled loyalty to the reigning emperor inside a commander’s own home. A pine cone-shaped architectural finial, also described as unusually rare for the region, was recovered alongside bronze furniture fragments and high-quality ceramics.

Remains of an extensive private bathing complex were documented as part of the same structure, a feature that would have set the commander’s quarters apart from the barracks and communal facilities used by ordinary legionaries elsewhere at the fort.

An Avar earring that outlasted the empire

Not every artifact from the site dates to the Roman military occupation. Excavators also recovered an Avar-period earring that HeritageDaily’s report describes as the first example of its type ever discovered in northern Bulgaria, evidence that the site continued to be used, or at least visited, long after Rome’s legions had gone.

The Avars were a nomadic steppe people who dominated much of the Carpathian Basin in the centuries after Rome’s western collapse, and their presence at a former legionary fortress on the Danube points to the site’s continued strategic value along the river long after its original garrison purpose ended. Untangling exactly how and why an Avar object ended up at Novae will likely require further excavation seasons rather than this year’s finds alone.

What the exposed riverbank still might hold

The low water levels that exposed this season’s finds are, by the team’s own account, a double-edged opportunity. The same drop in the Danube that let archaeologists document pottery, roof tiles and architectural remains along the bank also raises the question of where Novae’s ancient harbor once sat, a location the excavation has not yet pinned down.

Polish and Bulgarian archaeologists have worked the broader Novae site since 1960 under a partnership coordinated through the University of Warsaw’s Antiquity of Southeastern Europe Research Centre, and the fortress has already yielded a principia headquarters building, a military hospital and bath complexes in prior campaigns. The university’s own site history dates the fortress to roughly the middle of the first century A.D., built to house the First Italian Legion across nearly 18 hectares, with the legion’s presence documented at Novae until the 5th century and traces of later Roman activity persisting into the 6th. A praetorium of this size, if the identification holds up under further study, would close one of the longest-standing gaps in the site’s excavated layout.

This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.

More from Morning Overview