Roman Baths Museum
Permanent Exhibition
The Roman Baths Museum is located at the ground floor of a parking facility, some 3 metres below today's street level. It exhibits some impressive remnants of ancient Aquileia, an important Roman settlement in Heidenheim.
The centrepiece of the museum, which was opened in autumn 1984, is a monumental Roman structure, seat of a former administrative official of high rank, possibly even the secondary residence of the Roman province governor of Augsburg. You can see the remains of a small bathing building through the window of the entrance rotunda, even if the museum is closed. A diaporama leads you through the exhibition and several footbridges facilitate a direct way to the remnants of the wall. The impressive encounter with ancient times is complimented by the display of many archeological finds of Heidenheim and its surroundings. Visitors can go back some 1900 years in time and learn exemplary, interesting facts about the history and everyday life of a frontier province of the Roman Empire.
The reproduction of the Tabula Peutingeriana
Original parchment: from the 12th/13th century - Codex Vindobonensis 324, Austrian National Library
The oldest mentioning of a settlement in Heidenheim is to be found on a role of parchment of about 7 metres length and 30 centimetres breadth, a medieval copy of an ancient map, the so-called
Tabula Peutingeriana, handing down the ancient name of Aquileia for the Roman settlement in Heidenheim.
This mentioning of the Roman settlement in the Tabula Peutingeriana offers further proof of the central role of Heidenheim for the regional administration in Roman times at the intersection of several transport routes. The Tabula Peutingeriana was named after the humanist Konrad Peutinger from Augsburg and is nowadays kept safe at the Austrian National Library in Vienna. A complete reproduction of this unique document on a scale of 2,5:1 can be seen at top floor of the Roman Baths Museum in Heidenheim.
