City
Aquinco
Budapest
Listen to the story
Aquincum began as a Celtic settlement, as its ending reveals, the gathering place of a tribe called the Eravisci; its remains lie in Óbuda, part of Budapest. Under Trajan the Second Legion Adiutrix set up its permanent camp here, a bulwark against the Iazyges on the plains beyond the Danube. Hadrian made the town a municipium, Septimius Severus raised it to a colony, and it became the seat of the governor of Lower Pannonia. Emperors stayed here repeatedly, a large shield factory supplied the army, and in the amphitheatre the stone seats still carry the names of citizens.