Greece & Rome · 1st to 4th century AD · Cologne, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany
Roman household shrine found in governor's palace beneath Cologne
The 2nd-century lararium, with painted plaster and its altar slab, was found with a 1st-century staircase during work for Cologne's new MiQua museum.
Official announcement
Cologne, Germany Archaeologists from the Römisch-Germanisches Museum in Cologne have found a Roman household shrine of the 2nd century AD. It lay in the remains of the praetorium, the palace of the Roman governor, beneath the Rathausplatz in the city centre. The shrine, known as a lararium, is reported as the only example of its kind found north of the Alps.
The same excavation exposed a stone staircase of the late 1st century AD. It also exposed the massive foundation of a 4th-century basilica apse.
The digging is taking place ahead of construction of an underground visitor route for MiQua, the LVR-Jewish Museum in the Archaeological Quarter Cologne. The route runs deep. Its trenches have cut through Roman layers that later building would normally have destroyed.
Roman Cologne, Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensium, stood on the Rhine frontier. The praetorium was the governor's residence in the province of Germania Inferior.
A painted shrine in the governor's palace
A lararium was a shrine to the Lares, the protective deities of the home and family in Roman religion. Households left offerings there, such as food or small objects. The Cologne example is a small niche cut into a wall. The room belongs to the 2nd-century phase of the praetorium.
Remains of coloured plaster inside show that the niche was painted. The exact colours have not yet been determined. Holes above and on both sides of the opening once held nails. The excavators interpret them as fittings for garlands or ribbons hung during offerings.
Below the niche, a fine break line in the plaster marks where an altar slab was once set into the wall. The slab was the shelf on which offerings were placed. It turned up detached and slightly displaced during cleaning of the layer. The team plans to put it back in its original position after restoration.
Projections along the sides of the niche suggest it was framed, perhaps with a small pediment or moulding of wood or stucco.
Household shrines preserved in their architectural setting are known mainly from Pompeii and Herculaneum. There, the eruption of AD 79 sealed domestic interiors. In the north-western provinces, such shrines were usually dismantled in late antiquity. Otherwise they survive only as fragments too broken to reconstruct.
Excavation director Michael Wiehen has stressed that the structural preservation of the altar is what makes the find exceptional. The archaeologists also point out that the praetorium was an official building and also a home. The governor and his family lived there. So the shrine gives new information on private cults kept up inside official settings.
A rare staircase and a basilica foundation
The staircase dates to the late 1st century AD. Staircases rarely survive in Cologne, because most Roman buildings in the city are preserved only at foundation level.
Here the ground fell away steeply towards the Rhine. The builders used stone steps to link a higher part of the early praetorium with a level several metres lower, closer to the river. Where the staircase began and ended has not yet been established.
The excavators say it survived because the 1st-century ground level was buried early, in the Roman period itself. Fills laid to extend the praetorium platform covered it. That kept the steps from being robbed for stone.
The campaign began with the re-excavation of the apse of a large four-aisled basilica built in the 4th century. Before the dig, the apse showed only as a slight dip in the paving of the Rathausplatz. A section cut through it revealed a foundation up to four metres thick.
At first the foundation looked like standard Roman concrete. It turned out to be regular courses of volcanic tuff, basalt and limestone. A very hard mortar containing crushed brick and gravel bonds them together.
The archaeologists attribute its survival to the Late Roman raising of the ground with deposits of earth. This was probably done to even out the steep riverbank. The deposits shielded the lower levels from the demolition that the rest of the palace complex suffered in the Middle Ages. The apse area is now open to visitors for the first time.
The museum's management has said the staircase and the lararium will both be shown in place on the finished underground route. The wall painting will first be stabilised and the shrine restored. The shrine will then sit behind a climate-controlled display case.
Excavations are continuing in neighbouring parts of the Rathausplatz. There, the team expects the same early infilling may have preserved further Roman remains.
Sources
- Unique Roman House Altar (Lararium) Discovered in Cologne, First of Its Kind in Northern Europe (Arkeonews)
- Excavations at the Roman Governor’s Praetorium in Cologne Uncover a 1st-Century Staircase That Connected to the Rhine and the First “Lararium” North of the Alps (La Brújula Verde)
- Traces of Roman Cologne Uncovered (Archaeology Magazine)
- Rare Roman staircase and unique lararium discovered beneath Cologne’s MiQua Jewish Museum site (Archaeology News)
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