N. Kósa Judit - Szablyár Péter: Underground Buda - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2002)
A two-thousand-year old puzzle - Óbuda
largest and most up-to-date fortress was built in the 330s A.D., stretching east of the former one up to the Danube. The town called Aquincum was, for a while, the administrative centre of eastern Pannónia Province. However, its borders never coincided with those of the military camp; an entire town was raised around the latter, complete with inns, workshops, industrial installations and the residences of the soldiers and their families. Two kilometres north of this canabae (the town of shacks around the military encampment) was built the burgers' town proper. This is what the Museum of Aquincum and the garden of ruins aim to evoke. It is not coincidental, although perhaps unfair, that while at least the foundations of the less significant burgers' town should be preserved to this day - thanks to the fact that no new district was built on its remains, which is why four-fifths of its territory are yet to be explored — the far more impressive military encampment survives as no more than the scanty pieces of a puzzle. This part of Óbuda, in and around Flórián tér, has always been the most densely populated neighbourhood here, which is why the only occasion for exploration was created by construction work, and the ruins discovered could be exhibited only under the surface, if at all. The base camp of légió II Adiutrix has by now been moved underground into the cellars, basements and subways of Óbuda. The parts of the puzzle can only be fitted together with map in hand, especially as even the restored ruins have greatly deteriorated by now. The larger units are hard to access and the smaller ones are all but indecipherable. And that is despite the fact that it was a major triumph when a larger complex of ruins, the remnants of thermae maiorei, were made accessible to the public at the cost of modifying the plans of Árpád Bridge in the early 1980s. The outermost chamber of the so-called greater baths had originally been discovered when a lime pit was dug out in 1778. It was such a great sensation that even Maria Theresa was alerted to the find; it was with her help that a protective building was raised above the ruins in what is Flórián tér today. In 1930, a cold-water pool was found, which was then exhibited as a subterranean museum in the basement of a building erected overhead. In 1962, when the apartment block at No. 7 Kórház utca was being constructed, the eastern tract of the baths was discovered, too. This was opened to the public by propping up the eight- storey building above it on legs. When the exit flyover from Árpád Bridge was built, the pieces of the puzzle fell into place; what came to light was that the finest of the eighteen Roman baths was lying hidden beneath the surface of Flórián tér. The aqueduct had once conveyed hot water here from wells 16
