Carnuntum

Carnuntum, situated roughly 40 kilometres east of Vienna in Lower Austria, served from the 1st century AD as one of the most important Roman military and administrative centres north of the Alps. At its height as capital of the province of Upper Pannonia, the settlement housed up to 50,000 inhabitants — legionaries, merchants and civilians alike. One of its most historically charged moments came in 308 AD, when emperors Diocletian, Maximian and Galerius convened here to negotiate the succession of the Roman Empire. Carnuntum is also the only legionary fortress between Regensburg and Belgrade that was never built over by a modern city, preserving an exceptional archaeological footprint. The open-air museum features fully reconstructed Roman townhouses you can walk through — an unusually immersive approach to experimental archaeology — while the remains of the amphitheatre and civil town stretch across the Danube countryside on marked hiking trails.