N. Kósa Judit - Szablyár Péter: Underground Buda - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2002)
A two-thousand-year old puzzle - Óbuda
A two-thousand-year old puzzle - Óbuda It is almost embarrassing how a settlement that emerged only two thousand years ago can be woven into the texture of central Óbuda today. The contrast could not be greater indeed: on one hand there is the modern city giving expression to the 1970—80s philosophy of building housing estates, with its concrete high-rises arranged along broad avenues; on the other are the remains of hardly more than the foundations of historic buildings. All that is now visible at the Buda end of Árpád Bridge is the result of a compromise. When the quarter was rebuilt (at the time huge concrete apartment blocks supplanted the former houses standing along provincial little streets) only that much was preserved of the Roman military encampment whose remnants keep popping up from under the earth just about everywhere. The belly of the earth hides the traces of more than three hundred years’ worth of construction work. Legto IIAdiutrix, the permanent occupation force of the Roman empire, arrived here in 89 A.D. Surrounded with a board fence at first and later with a stone wall, the camp was established on the spot occupied by today’s Flórián tér, which was subsequently rebuilt on several occasions in the wake of the attacks on the fortified border, the timed. The ■ The Roman military bathi '5
