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Hidden gemHub · 2stops1st c. BC – 7th c. ADFree

Poetovio – Ptuj

Poetovio, Poetovium, Pettau

city · Ptuj, Slovenia

What it is
Ptuj is the oldest recorded town in Slovenia, and it began as Roman Poetovio — the base camp of the Thirteenth Legion, at the point where the road between the Baltic and the Adriatic crossed the Drava.
What you’ll see
The Orpheus Monument stands on Slovenski trg in front of the Town Tower, where it has always stood: it is the oldest public monument in Slovenia still in its original place, and the largest known monument from the Roman province of Pannonia Superior (en.wikipedia).
Worth the trip?
As a Roman destination on its own, honestly, not quite — there is no excavated town to walk round, and a visitor expecting one will be disappointed.
Getting there & cost
The point is the main square itself. A bus stop is 5 m away and paid car parks are within 60 m (OpenStreetMap).FreeHours, tickets and parking
A tall weathered marble stele standing on a cobbled square, carved with worn relief panels and crowned by lions, with a pale church tower behind it and townhouses along the street to the left.
The Orpheus Monument on Slovenski trg, in front of the Town Tower. · Photo: Clemens Stockner · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
The same stele seen close and square on, its upper panels carved with figures and animals, the lower half plain stone pierced by several round holes, standing on a stepped stone base.
Nearly five metres of Pohorje marble. The holes in the lower half are where iron rings were fixed when the stone served as a medieval pillory. · Photo: Clemens Stockner · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Walking route

HPoetovio12
Schematic, generated at build time from each stop's coordinates; no streets are drawn. Some positions are approximate, so the route is a guide, not a path. Open on the interactive map →

Walk it in this order

About 1.5 km and 18 minutes of walking, plus time at each stop.

  1. 1
    Mithraeum I of Ptuj

    temple

    Ticketed

  2. ↓ ≈ 18 min walk

    2
    Mithraeum III of Ptuj

    temple

    Ticketed

Walking times are estimates: the straight-line distance × 1.3 for streets, at 80 m a minute.

The stops

  1. A marble statue of a man in a short tunic and cloak, striding forward, bent under the weight of a bull slung across his shoulders, on a squared base; the background is plain reddish brown.

    Photo: Primož Jakopin · CC BY 4.0 · Commons

    Stop 1 · temple · Hajdina

    Mithraeum I of Ptuj

    A protective building covers the foundations of the shrine, with its floors and its altars in place — the register lists altars to Mithras and to his torch-bearers Cautes and Cautopates.

  2. A broken stone slab carved in crowded relief with small figures — a radiate head, a figure with a round shield, standing and reclining figures — against a plain reddish-brown background.

    Photo: Primož Jakopin · CC BY 4.0 · Commons

    Stop 2 · temple · Ptuj

    Mithraeum III of Ptuj

    The foundations of the shrine, under a protective building, with its original fittings: altars, reliefs, cult images and scenes of the Mithras legend (heritage register).

Ptuj is the oldest recorded town in Slovenia, and it began as Roman Poetovio — the base camp of the Thirteenth Legion, at the point where the road between the Baltic and the Adriatic crossed the Drava. The Roman town lies under the modern one, so what you come for is one extraordinary stone on the main square and two mithraea on the outskirts.

What is there today

The Orpheus Monument stands on Slovenski trg in front of the Town Tower, where it has always stood: it is the oldest public monument in Slovenia still in its original place, and the largest known monument from the Roman province of Pannonia Superior (en.wikipedia). It is a stele of white Pohorje marble, almost 5 m high and about 1.8 m wide, carved in the 2nd century as a grave marker for Marcus Valerius Verus, duumvir — mayor — of Roman Poetovio.

The carving repays a slow look, though all of it is badly eroded. The central relief shows Orpheus playing his lyre as he mourns Eurydice; other panels show the Greek-Egyptian god Serapis, who stood for the hope of resurrection, and in each corner a lion lies gnawing a ram’s head. In the tympanum below, the moon goddess Selene leans over her dead lover Endymion (en.wikipedia). The round holes punched through the lower half are not Roman: in the Middle Ages the stone was used as a pillory, and criminals were tied to iron rings fixed there. It has been a national cultural monument since March 2008.

Beyond the square, the town’s Roman material is in its museums and in the two mithraea listed below, which are out of the centre and have their own pages.

Is it worth the trip?

As a Roman destination on its own, honestly, not quite — there is no excavated town to walk round, and a visitor expecting one will be disappointed. As a stop, yes: Ptuj is a handsome old town where the single best Roman monument in Slovenia stands in the open, free, in the middle of the square, and the mithraea give you somewhere to go afterwards. Come for the town and the monument together rather than for Roman Poetovio as such.

Getting there

The point is the main square itself. A bus stop is 5 m away and paid car parks are within 60 m (OpenStreetMap). The tourist information office is about 20 m from the monument, and there are museums, cafés and a bakery on the same square. Nothing here opens or closes: the Orpheus Monument is outdoors and free at any hour.

Visiting details

Tickets
Free
Parking
Paid surface car parks at 10 m and 54 m from the square (OSM way/1169544106 and way/1293377062, both fee=yes).
On foot
At the parking

Before you go

  • The Roman town is under the modern one. What you can see on the square is the Orpheus Monument; the two mithraea are a bus ride out and are covered on their own pages.

History

Poetovio was an ancient city in Pannonia and the base camp of Legio XIII Gemina (Pleiades). The site had been inhabited since the late Stone Age, and the Roman town grew out of a military fort at a strategically important crossing of the Drava, on a prehistoric trade route running between the Baltic and the Adriatic (en.wikipedia). Pleiades records the place as attested in both the Roman and late antique periods, bracketing it between 30 BC and about AD 640.

Nearby

  • Grey drystone walls standing about head height on a grassy clearing among bare trees, with lower foundation courses running away from them across the slope.

    Photo: Ajznponar · CC BY 4.0 · Commons

    43 km · fort · Šentjur

    Rifnik

    The plan of the settlement is the point.

  • Roman stone walls several metres high along the foot of a green slope, with steam rising from a pool of water behind a railing and gravel paths among the ruins in the foreground.

    Photo: Fraxinus · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Commons

    48 km · bath · Varaždin County

    Aquae Iasae

    A compact archaeological park covering about 6,000 m² of Roman public buildings of the 1st to 4th centuries.

Straight-line distances.

Sources

Every fact on this page comes from the records below, each used under the licence noted.

SourceLicence
Pleiades 197446CC BY
Wikipedia (en) — PtujCC BY-SA 4.0
Wikipedia (en) — Orpheus MonumentCC BY-SA 4.0