Roman Period

In the 1^st century, the landscape of terraces upon which the center of Vienna now stands offered excellent conditions for the construction of a military base on the northern border of the Roman Empire. The natural barrier of the nearby Danube river offered protection as well as being a key trade route.

Important archaeological finds from the Roman Period have been made regularly in Vienna since the 16^th century. But it was the huge excavations that accompanied the redevelopment of the city in the late 19^th century that provided certainty about the location of the former legionary fortress of Vindobona and its civilian settlements. During this early construction monitoring by municipal archaeologists, huge quantities of artifacts were recovered. These were brought together in the "Museum Vindobonense", Vienna’s first archaeological museum. Following the destruction of the Museum Vindobonense in 1945, the collection was taken over by the Historisches Museum der Stadt Wien, which is now the Wien Museum.

Since then, as a result of the many excavations that have accompanied building projects in the city, the collection has grown to over 100,000 objects. Roman settlements and workshops as well as key infrastructural elements such as aqueducts and road systems have been identified and researched in cooperation with Stadtarchäologie Wien.