Verulamium was one of the largest Roman towns in Britain, occupying around 200 acres on the River Ver southwest of modern St Albans. Founded on or near the pre-Roman oppidum of the Catuvellauni, it developed rapidly after the conquest of AD 43, was sacked by Boudica in AD 60/61, and flourished through the 2nd–4th centuries before contracting in the early 5th century. It held the rank of municipium, probably from the Flavian period, granting its leading inhabitants Latin rights.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
Verulamium was a major administrative and economic centre, the only town in Britain explicitly attested by Tacitus as a municipium, and lay on Watling Street, the main route from London to the northwest. It was also the reputed site of the martyrdom of St Alban, Britain's first Christian martyr, traditionally in the 3rd or early 4th century, lending it lasting religious significance.
Extensive excavations by Mortimer Wheeler in the 1930s and Sheppard Frere in the 1950s–60s revealed the forum-basilica (with its dedicatory inscription of AD 79 naming Agricola), a theatre (the only known Romano-British example of its type), town walls, gates, town houses with mosaics and painted wall plaster, and evidence of the Boudican destruction layer. Finds including a substantial 4th-century town house with a hypocaust and the famous "shell" mosa
Verulamium was one of the largest Roman towns in Britain, occupying around 200 acres on the River Ver southwest of modern St Albans. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a settlement site from the Roman period in Britain.
Verulamium is classified as a Roman settlement — a civilian site in the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer. Roman Britain's archaeology encompasses thousands of sites ranging from legionary fortresses and marching camps to villas, temples and towns.
Several Roman sites lie within a short distance, including Verulamium Roman theater (0.2 km), Verulamium, part of wall and ditch of Roman city (0.7 km), Gorhambury Ancient Site (1.7 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
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