Frontiers of the Roman Empire

• Official name: Frontiers of the Roman Empire
• Location: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland; Germany; Slovakia, Austria
• Type: Cultural
• Year of inscription: 1987; modified 2005, 2008, and 2021

The World Heritage Site known as the Frontiers of the Roman Empire is actually multiple sites. Two of these sites (Hadrian’s Wall and the Antonine Wall) are located in the United Kingdom, and one (the German Limes) is primarily in Germany. In 2021, the western segment of the Danube Limes, including sites in Germany, Austria, and Slovakia, was added to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage List as part of the Frontiers of the Roman Empire. The first UNESCO inscription of this enormous, combined site took place in 1987, with significant modifications to its boundaries and scope taking place in 2005, 2008, and 2021.

Likely the best-known of the sites is Hadrian’s Wall, located in northern England. This wall was constructed about 122 CE at the behest of Roman emperor Hadrian to protect the northernmost border of the Roman Empire’s Britannia province. At about 73 miles (118 kilometers) in length, Hadrian’s Wall originally stretched from the North Sea to the Irish Sea.

About twenty years later, Emperor Antonius Pius ordered the construction of another wall even farther north in modern Scotland. The wall was to protect Roman Britons from the local Indigenous population. This wall, known as the Antonine Wall, runs for 37 miles (60 kilometers) between the Firth of Forth and the lakes and coast of western Scotland, near the modern cities of Edinburgh and Glasgow.

Although not as universally famous as the United Kingdom sites, the Limes in Germany are far longer than the others combined, reaching a total length of 341 miles (550 kilometers). The Limes are viewed as two related sections, reaching from the Danube River in northwestern Germany. They are more formally known as the Upper German-Raetian Limes. The term limes in this context refers to a Latin word for frontier. Other parts of the Limes in Central Europe, inscribed as a separate World Heritage Site in 2021, reach into Austria and Slovakia.

The Frontiers of the Roman Empire World Heritage Site is meant to memorialize and protect the three main sites within its boundaries. However, the broader intent is to mark the borders of the Roman Empire at the time of its greatest expansion, which it reached in the early second century CE. At that point, Roman forces had occupied, conquered, or significantly influenced populations throughout Western Europe, Southern Europe, much of Northern and Central Europe, and large parts of the Middle East and North Africa.

Many of the Roman borders did not require major fortifications, but in contested zones, the Romans constructed walls, forts, towers, barracks, and other defensive platforms. Many of these have been lost to time or destruction, but many have survived. A significant quantity of the latter has been identified and preserved, and some have been restored and turned into historical tourist destinations.

History

According to legend, Rome was founded about 753 BCE as a small farming village. Over more than eight hundred years, this village underwent a dramatic and unprecedented transformation in both size and nature. As an empire, Rome conquered much of the Mediterranean in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East and stretched through much of western, northern, and central Europe. As the Roman Empire reached its maximum state of growth—shortly before it began its long and bloody decline—its frequently contested northern borders reached into what are today England and Germany.

Despite Rome’s humble origins, the settlement seemed fated for expansion. Its early legends and myths often promoted the glory of Rome and the power of its leaders to spread into new lands. The first expansions were relatively small, consisting of Romans moving to neighboring areas and taking control of local hills and small settlements. In 509 BCE, Rome became a republic, but it continued to grow over the course of the centuries.

A major early victory was Veii, a large city formerly controlled by the Etruscan people. Instead of murdering or enslaving the defeated, as often occurred in ancient wars, Roman leaders largely absorbed them into the ever-growing Roman governmental system as allies or even full citizens. Within about 250 years, Rome had spread to control all of the peninsula that is today known as Italy.

Many historians consider the Roman Empire’s success as two-fold. First, the empire commanded an army unparalleled in the ancient world, with strict and almost unerring discipline, the latest in military technology, and a thirst for victory and glory. Second, Roman leaders held many of their territories relatively lightly. Instead of attempting to colonize or oppress them, Roman officials generally allowed locals to govern their own affairs to a large extent as long as they served Rome’s general aims and yielded considerable taxes to Roman leaders.

The growth continued at a steady pace through the coming years. With lands in Italy exhausted, Roman leaders and soldiers turned their attention to foreign lands. In the Punic Wars (264–146 BCE), Roman forces began conquering territory held in Northern Africa and around the Mediterranean and spread further into Western Europe in modern-day Spain. They declared the lands they overtook to be provinces, to be led by Roman officials, and treated defeated people with significantly less leeway than before, in fact enslaving the people of Carthage.

By the end of the first century BCE, the Roman Republic had conquered Egypt, Greece, Jerusalem, and the Republic of Türkiye. Still, many Romans desired more territory. Foremost among these was Julius Caesar, then a general, who began vigorous and bloody campaigns throughout Western and Central Europe. This increased push, along with Caesar’s declaration of himself as a dictator, signaled the end of the Roman Republic.

The Roman Empire officially began with the rise to power of Caesar’s nephew, Augustus, as emperor in 27 BCE. Under Augustus and subsequent leaders, Roman forces pushed ever-farther into Europe. By 117 CE, the empire’s northern borders had stretched far into what is now England and Germany. By this time, the brisk expansion ceased, and leaders felt they were overextending themselves.

Rather than continue to press on, Roman leaders and soldiers went about fortifying their borders against the barbarians, the Roman name for non-Roman people in the contested lands. The continued strain of defending these far-flung borders, along with political infighting, the waning of Roman unity, and many other factors, eventually led to the empire’s decline. In 395 CE, the Roman Empire split into a Western and Eastern faction; the former collapsed in 476 CE following barbarian invasions. The empire’s long-contested fortified borders in England and Germany became politically insignificant and were largely lost to time for many centuries.

Significance

The Frontiers of the Roman Empire site marks the importance of numerous ancient structures and earthworks, many of which can still be seen in modern times, though often in a reduced or fragmented form. The walls in the United Kingdom, known as Hadrian’s Wall and the Antonine Wall, originally included lengthy stone walls dotted by towers and military installations and supported by a wide variety of banks, roads, and ditches. Historians note the extensive engineering that went into their construction, both in the scope of the planning needed to stretch across dozens of miles of often-challenging terrain and in the high quality of their workmanship. The German Limes, while not known for proper walls, consisted of a great assortment of barriers, fortifications, modified natural features, and both military and civilian infrastructure. All of this represented a huge-scale, mostly cohesive, and temporarily successful plan to separate Romans from non-Roman barbarians and to control the often-contested borderlands between them.

Even more than to honor and protect the physical remains of these sites, the UNESCO designated them a World Heritage Site to show their overall historical significance. To be named to the World Heritage list, a site must meet one of ten UNESCO criteria. The Frontiers of the Roman Empire has met three of the ten. First, their forts, walls, ditches, and linked infrastructure are considered significant developments in human architecture. They bear “exceptional testimony to a cultural tradition or to a civilization.” And their architectural design “illustrates a significant stage in human history.

The period of their construction marked the highest point of the Roman Empire’s then-unprecedented geographical and cultural expansion, which reached through much of Western, Northern, and Southern Europe and included significant parts of Central Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East—basically, much of the entire world known to the Romans at the time. The Frontiers of the Roman Empire site serves to honor the scope and spread of the Roman Empire and to demonstrate how dramatically its leaders and citizens influenced people of many different lands through both war and countless forms of cultural exchange. In its bid to dominate the known world, the Roman Empire spread profoundly impactful ideas about engineering, politics, law, art, architecture, military tactics, religion, and much more. Even though the empire itself has long since dissolved, its mark on world history was enormous and indelible.

Bibliography

“Antonine Wall.” Historic Environment Scotland, www.historicenvironment.scot/advice-and-support/listing-scheduling-and-designations/world-heritage-sites/antonine-wall/. Accessed 13 Jan. 2025.

Breeze, David J. and Sonja Jilek. Frontiers of the Roman Empire: The European Dimension of a World Heritage Site. Historic Scotland, 2008.

Elton, Hugh. Frontiers of the Roman Empire. Routledge, 2012.

“Frontiers of the Roman Empire.” UNESCO World Heritage Centre, whc.unesco.org/en/list/430. Accessed 13 Jan. 2025.

“Frontiers of the Roman Empire—The Danube Limes (Western Segment).” UNESCO World Heritage Centre, whc.unesco.org/en/list/1608. Accessed 13 Jan. 2025.

"The History of the Wall." Hadrian's Wall Country, hadrianswallcountry.co.uk/explore/the-history-of-the-wall/. Accessed 13 Jan. 2025.

Little, Becky. “How Far Did Ancient Rome Spread?” History, 18 May 2023, www.history.com/news/ancient-roman-empire-map-julius-caesar-conquests. Accessed 13 Jan. 2025.