Aurelian Walls
Alarmed by barbarian raids into Italy, Aurelian ringed Rome with a 19-kilometre brick wall — the city’s first new walls since the Republic — and went on to reunite the fragmented empire.
- Date
- 271–275year known · duration: ≈ 4 years
- Place
- Aurelian Walls (Rome)today: Rome, Italy · Western and Central Europe
- Participants
- Aurelian, Roman Empire
- Threads
- Europe in the Roman age (1st–5th c.)
- Also known as
- Mura aureliane; Аврелианова стена
In 270 the Juthungi and other invaders broke into northern Italy, and the capital itself no longer felt safe. The wall begun in 271 was built in about five years and completed after Aurelian’s death; about 8 m high and 3.5 m thick, it had hundreds of towers; Maxentius and Honorius later strengthened it.
Meanwhile Aurelian defeated Zenobia of Palmyra (272–273) and the Gallic emperor Tetricus (274), reuniting the empire, and was hailed as Restitutor Orbis, “Restorer of the World”; he also gave up the province of Dacia. The walls did not save Rome from Alaric in 410, but much of them still stands.
Connections
Part of
- Crisis of the Third CenturyMarch 235 – 20 November 284 · Western and Central Europe
Related events
- Sack of Rome by the Visigoths24–27 August 410 · Western and Central EuropeAlaric’s Goths entered Rome through the Salarian Gate of these walls
Same participants
- Establishment of the Tetrarchy1 March 293 · Western and Central Europevia Roman Empire
Same place
- Great Fire of Rome19 July 64 – c. 27 July 64 · Western and Central Europe
- Inauguration of the Colosseum80 · Western and Central Europe
- Antonine Plague165–180 · Western and Central Europe
- Constitutio Antoniniana212 · Western and Central Europe
- Battle of the Milvian Bridge28 October 312 · Western and Central Europe
- Vandal sack of Rome2–16 June 455 · Western and Central Europe
- Gothic War (535–554)535–554 · Western and Central Europe
- Coronation of Charlemagne25 December 800 · Western and Central Europe
- Imperial coronation of Otto I2 February 962 · Western and Central Europe
- Fourth Council of the Lateran11–30 November 1215 · Western and Central Europe
- “Summa Theologica” by Thomas Aquinas1265–1274 · Western and Central Europe
- Sack of Rome (1527)6 May 1527 · Western and Central Europe
Meanwhile in the world
Other regions, within 25 years of this event
Eastern Europe
- Kyiv culturec. 200 – between 400 and 430
- Chernyakhov culturebetween 200 and 250 – between 400 and 430
Balkans and Anatolia
- Battle of Abritusbetween June and August 251
The same period
Sources
- Wikipedia (English): Aurelian Walls
- Wikipedia (English): Aurelian
- Wikipedia (Russian): Стена Аврелиана
- Wikipedia (Russian): Аврелиан
- Watson A. Aurelian and the Third Century. — London: Routledge, 1999.
- Wikidata: Q625149