Ancient graveyard lies in the middle of Belgrade, unfortunately not for long anymore. Roman excavation in Belgrade started only two months ago, but they’ll be finished today.
Soon there will be a new shiny parking hall on top of it.
Belgrade, once known as Singidunum, has been destroyed 44 times and always rebuilt.
In a city with a long history, it’s no surprise you can come across a Roman cemetery when you start to dig the ground.
This is what happened this summer in the park of the Parliament building.
We got to see the excavations of the cemetery with the guidance of archaeologists from the Belgrade City Museum.
It’s half past four in the afternoon on Tuesday of Midsummer week and the temperature is well over thirty degrees.
A Couple of dozens of Belgrade Foreign Visitors Club expat community members are ready to accompany the archaeologist Mihailo to a huge excavation site.
The Serbian Parliament building is standing only fifty meters away.
On the other side of the street, behind the mesh fence of the construction site, the row of residential buildings from the beginning of the last century ends with the buildings of the Ministry of Culture and the Serbian History Museum.
We are right in the center of the Serbian capital, a five-minute walk from our home.
The aqueduct remains under the parking garage
A Chinese company started building a parking garage next to the parliament building in the spring, but an archaeological excavation will be carried out on the site before that.
It is not done in vain, because a Roman cemetery from the 3rd to 4th century AD was found here, as well as other structures from that and later times.
However, they will not remain visible to the public, but after the excavations, the area will be covered and a parking garage will be built as planned.
Mihailo leads the group down to the excavation area.
First he introduces us to a Roman-era water collector, from which a 70-meter-long open-top water pipe, an aqueduct, leaves.
In the middle of the aqueduct, there is another well made of bricks, albeit of a much later date, from the 20th century.
Pieces of aqueducts and led water pipes have been found all over Belgrade. They brought and shared water all over Singidunum and to the IV Roman Legion ”Flavia”, which has its camp in the town.
The water came from hills about 15 kilometers east of present-day Belgrade city center.
The grave robbers took it all (almost)
We move to the first grave. It is a simple stone sarcophagus without any carvings or bas-reliefs. There is a semicircular opening at the top of the side, and the other half of the circle can undoubtedly be found on the lid of the sarcophagus.
– At some point, the grave robbers found the cemetery, explains Mihailo, who speaks excellent British English.
-They carved that opening and pulled out everything that was in the coffin, including the remains of the deceased. They left them here, but of course, took everything valuable.
Mihailo lifts a small tarp next to the coffin. Beneath it, a bone is revealed, most likely a human femur.
One of us asks if archaeologists have covered the remains out of respect for the deceased.
– We don’t, but so that no one would step on them, as we don’t use the red flags, Mihailo says.
Although as a result of the robbery, there are no possessions of the deceased left, from which one could have deduced something about his life. Mihailo is not particularly angry with the perpetrators.
– Grave robbing and its technique are also part of history and therefore interesting.
Besides, we archaeologists are kind of grave robbers too, we just call it science, he grins.
Fortunately, graverobbers missed something. Aside from some coins and fragments of jewelry, archaelogists found a very rare and well-preserved hairpin, made of translucent glass. Usually, those are made of bone or various metals.
Graves of the poor from an impoverished city
There are five types of graves found in the area. Of course, stone sarcophagi belonged to the upper-class. In addition, there are middle-class graves made of bricks and remains of nails that have been part of the wooden coffins of the poor.
They, on the other hand, have not been of interest to grave robbers, and the graves themselves have therefore remained untouched.
Two tombs are simply pits in the ground with skeletons in. They are supposed to belong to Christians. However, human remains are now moved away.
Mihailo and his colleague Dušan have deduced that the finds tell about the city that was impoverished along with the decline of the entire Roman Empire.
For example, the lack of decoration on the sarcophagus is clear proof of this, as is the stack of large stone tablets in one corner of the trench.
– There is writing on the tablets, but they are not related to the graves. These stone plates have been recycled for reuse. There has been no money to pay for the engravers, and they probably no longer existed in the town.
Serbia is full of Roman ruins
We continue the tour to the other graves and from there to the deep excavation mound. It’s not antique anymore.
-This is related to the Turkish bath, which was built on the site in the 17th century. So we have made discoveries from antiquity from the second and third centuries, as well as from the 17th and 20th centuries. In between, there has been nothing here, Dušan reveals.
Although this excavation and its findings are significant, finds from the Roman period are by no means rare in Serbia.
It was the Eastern corner of the Roman Empire where remarkable Roman settlements, fortresses, and palaces were located. Many of those have been excavated all over the country.
The Romans also started viticulture in Serbia. As many as 18 Roman emperors came from the area of present-day Serbia, the most prominent of them being Constantine the Great, who was born in Naissus aka Niš.
Belgrade was known at that time as Singidunum. Its center was more than a kilometer away from the parliament building, in the area of the current Kalemegdan fortress at the junction of the Danube and Sava rivers.
The burial ground has therefore been outside the city at that time, along the Via Militaris that led to Constantinople.
See Roman artefacts in Belgrade
The Roman excavation in Belgrade, the one in the park of the Parliament building, will be buried under concrete, but there is plenty to see in Belgrade from Roman times.
In the pedestrian center, right in front of the Rajićeva shopping center located next to Kalemegdan, there is a section of a Roman street visible under glass.
In the fortress itself, Roman objects found in the area, such as sarcophagi and statues, are collected in the 18th-century Austrian powder cellar.
You can join the Belgrade underground tour to see it yourself.
In addition, extensive archeological excavations are planned for the core center, Studentski trg near Kalemegdan, but their initiation is still uncertain.
Serbian archaeologist must be a Stoic
We are still at the excavation site of the Parliament building park.
Our group is worried and even shocked that the great finds are going to be buried again.
Deeper than six feet under.
Comparing to other European countries, for example in Italy and Spain it would be prevented by the law.
– Will there not even be a glass-floor on top of the tombs and aqueducts through which they can be admired?
– No, there will be not.
Mihailo takes a surprisingly calm approach to the matter.
– In Serbia, archaeologists are required to have a very stoic approach to things. You have an unnecessarily romantic, or maybe an ideological view, he replies to Philomena who has arranged our visit.
– This Chinese company got the contract from the government to build a parking garage here and that’s what they’re doing. It’s not about Chinese, everyone is doing the same. We document and save what we can.
Will there be more?
The oldest known settlement in Europe, Vinća, is only a 14 kilometers away and the Celts inhabited Singidunum even before the Romans.
We ask Dušan if they could find more by digging deeper.
– Surely we would come across even prehistoric layers. But we don’t have time to dig that deep.
The excavations have been extended two weeks from the original schedule. Early summer has been rainy and it has slowed down the work.
We wonder if the archaeologists will manage to get everything documented and secured in the given time.
– We have to, Mihailo smiles.