Leonding City Museum

The Limes road linked the individual military installations and other ancillary features. Quite often along a natural boundary, the Limes road runs well behind the course of the river, dictated by the terrain. Watch-towers and fortlets and sometimes also forts, are connected to the supra-regional Limes road with smaller roads. Between the outposts it was possible to communicate by signalling with fire. "Some of these towers, especially those in exposed places, were most probably used as a signalling posts. Signalling with fire must have been common at that time and therefore it may be of interest to mention the functioning of signalling with fire as described by Sextus Iulius Africanus in his encyclopaedic work “Kestoi” in ca. 230 AD . He was the only author to describe this system; however, since he was a Greek-speaking author he wrote about how to signal in the Greek alphabet. He described the technique as follows: “Romans use the following technique, which seems to me extraordinary. If they want to signal with fire they do as follows. They choose the suitable places for signalling. They have three fires - on the right, on the left and in the middle, meaning alpha to theta on the left, from iota to pi in the middle, and rho to omega on the right. If signalling a letter alpha they lift the fire on the left once, for the letter beta twice and for the letter gamma three times, and so on. The receivers of the signal can easily decode such signals and transmit them to the next outpost”." Peter Kos (Ljubljana), Claustra Alpium Iuliarum - Protecting Late Roman Italy

The watchtower at Hirschleitengraben on Kürnberg (possible, that it looked like this) is situated in the woods on higher ground overlooking the Danube to the east of Wilhering. The first tower (6 x 6 m) was build at the end of the second century AD after the Marcomannic Wars to secure this Limes section with additional fortifications. The later larger tower (9.2 x 9.3 m) surrounded by a ditch belongs to the late Roman period.

On the streets most people moved on foot, on riding horses, or by traveling coach although this was reserved for a better-off clientele.
To the east of Wilhering the Danube valley open up into the Linz basin. Here was a pre-Roman Danubecrossing of the Norican highway, which runs from Carinthia and the Magdalensberg area into the center of Bohemia. The location of Linz appears to have been used from Celtic times onwards.

The museum Stadtmuseum Leonding is housed in one of the towers Maximilian´s former defenses.

text from:
Frontiers of the Roman Empire (...)
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