History

The founding of Ulpia Traiana Sarmizegetusa was a direct act of imperial policy. Following two gruelling campaigns (101–102 AD and 105–106 AD) in which the Roman legions broke the power of the Dacian king Decebalus — who killed himself rather than be led in triumph through Rome — the emperor Trajan organised the conquered territory as the new province of Dacia and established a colonial capital on flat, defensible ground at the mouth of the Hațeg Basin. The choice of location was deliberate: it was not on the site of Sarmizegetusa Regia, the old Dacian sacred and royal capital in the Orăștie Mountains, but on a new site near the main military road running north from the Danube, in a position from which the governor’s administration could control the principal routes through the province. The colony was named Colonia Ulpia Traiana Augusta Dacica Sarmizegetusa — a name that appropriated the prestige of the Dacian royal capital while asserting Roman dominance — and was granted the highest status in the Roman provincial hierarchy: colonia with the ius Italicum, meaning its territory was legally treated as Italian soil and its citizens were exempt from land tax.

The city grew rapidly. Within a generation of its foundation it had the full apparatus of a Roman provincial capital: the forum-basilica complex at the centre of the grid (approximately 110 by 48 metres, among the largest forum basilicas in the Danubian provinces), the macellum (covered market), the temple of the imperial cult, baths, the amphitheatre to the east of the main grid, and the private houses and workshops of a diverse population whose origins are recorded in inscriptions: Italian veterans from Legio I Adiutrix and Legio IV Flavia Felix, traders from Asia Minor and Syria, freedmen, Gallic soldiers turned colonists, and Dacians who had adopted Roman citizenship and Latin names. The city served as the capital of the province until approximately 168 AD, when administrative reforms moved some functions to Apulum (modern Alba Iulia), though Ulpia Traiana retained its status as the senior colony. The crisis of the 3rd century — Gothic incursions, economic instability, plague — gradually drained the population; the emperor Aurelian’s decision in approximately 270 AD to formally evacuate the province of Dacia ended the city’s official existence.

After abandonment, the ruins were quarried systematically by medieval populations who used the dressed stone blocks for local construction — a process that stripped the standing remains but preserved the ground plan relatively intact beneath agricultural fields. Systematic excavation began in the 19th century under the Austro-Hungarian authorities and has continued under Romanian archaeologists; the site today is partially exposed, partially under active investigation, and contains a small on-site museum.