Varnenum

Varnenum is a preserved and partly restored excavation site of a Roman vicus with a Gallo-Roman temple complex near Kornelimünster, just east of Aachen. It sits on a flat hilltop called the Schildchen, about 700 metres from St Stephen’s Church. The first recorded digs took place in 1907, 1911, 1923 and 1924, followed by larger surveys in the 1980s and geophysical work between 2016 and 2018. The name Varnenum comes from the inscribed mention of the Celtic god Varnenus, though no direct ancient text confirms the site’s Roman title. Archaeologists divide the remains into four main building periods, the earliest stretching back before the turn of the era. The site’s importance lies in its scale and the insights it offers into Gallo-Roman religion and settlement. Magnetometer readings and phosphate tests suggest the temple district once covered at least 150 000 square metres, with a central open space measuring at least 100 metres by 55 metres used for processions. Finds date the main occupation from the first to the mid third century. Among the visible structures are two reconstructed temples, a storage building, a possible priest’s house and a colonnaded hall in the east. A wide stone stairway leads up to each temple, and the southern entrance was framed by a temenos wall with a 3.08-metre gateway. Visitors walk over restored foundations that stand up to a metre high. The larger temple, F2, measures about 19 metres by 17 metres, with a cella of roughly 9 metres by 9 metres. A second temple, G, has a similar plan and an intact east wall. Nearby lie the remains of a two-room storehouse and the courtyard of a building that may have housed priests or official functions. The surrounding fields still show traces of the vicus, though most of its buildings remain unexcavated. From the hilltop there are views across the Aachen basin towards the city’s historic centre.