Roman walls

Under “wall” we group the Roman defences that survive as a wall rather than as a fort: city walls, the barrier walls of the late Roman frontier system, and single stretches of late antique fortification found under later towns.

The best-known is in Ljubljana. Roman Emona was founded in AD 14 and fortified from the start with strong walls; a reconstructed building inscription naming the emperors Augustus and Tiberius is dated between autumn AD 14 and spring AD 15. Part of the south wall survives in the park on Mirje. It was reconstructed in 1913 to a uniform height and then, between 1927 and 1956, rearranged by the architect Jože Plečnik, who cut two new passages through it towards Snežnik and Murnik streets, laid out a lapidarium of ancient architectural elements behind it and set a turf-covered pyramid above one of the passages. It is a monument of national importance and a public park. Emona itself was empty after the first half of the 6th century.

The other family of walls belongs to the Claustra Alpium Iuliarum, the late Roman barrier between Italy and Pannonia, most of which was built after 284 under Diocletian and Constantine I. Where it has been excavated, at the fortress of Ad Pirum on the Hrušica plateau, the wall stood 8 m high and 2 m thick, with towers 10 m high. The system fell into disrepair after the 5th century; selected sections have since been restored by archaeologists, and the forts themselves are listed under “fort”.

A third kind is a single late Roman wall inside a later town, such as the wall with a rectangular tower presented under the floor of the Pastoral Centre in Črnomelj, on the same spot as the town wall of the 14th–15th century. Each entry says how much wall is standing, whether it has been rebuilt, and how to get to it.