Castra Ala Nova

The cavalry fort Ala Nova once stood in what is now the Klein-Schwechat district of Schwechat, a town on the edge of the Vienna Basin where the Schwechat river meets the Danube. Built in the late 2nd century from wood and earth, it was later rebuilt in stone during the early 3rd century as a rectangular fort enclosed by walls. The fort housed a mobile cavalry unit of 500 horsemen, part of the Upper Pannonian Limes that secured the plain between Vindobona and Carnuntum. Archaeologists have found traces of civilian settlements nearby, including burial grounds and evidence of early bridges over local streams. Ala Nova appears twice in ancient records. The Itinerarium Antonini, a 3rd-century road guide, places it halfway between Vindobona and Carnuntum, about nine kilometres from the legionary camp at Vindobona. The Notitia Dignitatum, a 5th-century administrative handbook, lists the fort under its final garrison, the Dalmatian cavalry. Excavations since the 19th century have uncovered sections of the fort’s ramparts, barracks, and thousands of coins from the 4th century, including a hoard of 12,000 silver-plated copper coins found in a clay pot near the cemetery. Today the site lies beneath Alanovaplatz, the local cemetery, and the grounds of a brewery. Visitors can walk over the buried remains of the fort’s walls and moat, now marked by modern paving and planting. The area around Schwechat still shows traces of Roman activity, with finds of milestones and stamped bricks from Legio X Gemina. The nearby Frauenfeld burial ground and the old Danube bank at am Grund hint at the fort’s original setting among streams and floodplains.