Romano-Germanic Museum

"RGM" redirects here. For an airport known colloquially as "RGM", see Robert Gabriel Mugabe International Airport.

Romano-Germanic Museum

Römisch Germanisches Museum
Romano-Germanic Museum
Established	1946 New building: 1974
Location	Cologne, Germany
Collection size	Cologne Roman cultural heritage
Public transit access	5 16 18 Köln Hbf
Website	http://www.museenkoeln.de/

The Roman-Germanic Museum (RGM, in German: Römisch-Germanisches Museum) is an archaeological museum in Cologne, Germany. It has a large collection of Roman artifacts from the Roman settlement of Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensium, on which modern Cologne is built. The museum protects the original site of a Roman town villa, from which a large Dionysus mosaic remains in its original place in the basement, and the related Roman Road just outside. In this respect the museum is an archaeological site.

The museum also has the task of preserving the Roman cultural heritage of Cologne, and therefore houses an extensive collection of Roman glass from funerals and burials and also exercises archaeological supervision over the construction of the Cologne underground.

Most of the museum's collection was housed at the Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne until 1946. In the front of the museum the former northern town gate of Cologne with the inscription CCAA (for Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensium) is on display in the building.

The museum

Section of the Dionysus mosaic (220-230 AD) in the Römisch-Germanisches Museum Cologne

The Römisch-Germanisches Museum, which opened in 1974, is near Cologne Cathedral, on the site of a 3rd-century villa. The villa was discovered in 1941 during the construction of an air-raid shelter. On the floor of the main room of the villa is the renowned Dionysus mosaic. Since the mosaic could not be moved easily, the architects Klaus Renner and Heinz Röcke designed the museum around the mosaic. The inner courtyards of the museum mimic the layout of the ancient villa.

Sepulchre of Poblicius, 40 AD

In addition to the Dionysus mosaic, which dates from around A.D. 220/230, there is the reconstructed sepulchre of the legionary Poblicius (about A.D. 40). There is also an extensive collection of Roman glassware as well as an array of Roman and medieval jewellery. Many artefacts of everyday life in Roman Cologne, ivory and bone objects, bronzes — including portraits of Roman emperor Augustus and his wife Livia Drusilla —, coins, wall paintings, inscriptions, pottery and architectural fragments round out the displays.

The museum has the world's largest collection of Roman glass vessels from the 1st to 4th centuries, with more than 4,000 complete collection pieces, including a large number of luxury glasses such as figure vessels, snake thread glasses, cut glasses and tricolor diatretes, for example the famous Cologne cage cup from the 4th century, a top piece known among experts. Typical are glass drinking vessels that are decorated with attached glass drops of a different color, the so-called Cologne nubs. The collection, which also includes Franconian glass, continues to grow through excavation finds from the Roman necropolises.

On the night of 18 January 2007, Cyclone Kyrill blew a sheet of plywood through the glass front of the museum right onto the Dionysus mosaic. The damage was repaired within a week.

See also

• Cage cup
• Conchylia cup
• Roman governors of Germania Inferior

Collections (images)

• 
  Trading on the Rhine
• 
  Collection of Roman glassware
• 
  The Cologne cage cup, 12 cm high, 4th century
• 
  Sandal-shaped glass vessels
• 
  spot-patterned Roman glassware, typical for Cologne
• 
  Replica of a Roman carriage
• 
  Mosaic floor
• 
  Wall painting with Dionysian scenes
• 
  Wall painting
• 
  Tombstone of calvalryman Longinus Biarta
• 
  Tomb for the cavalry soldier Flavius ​​Bassus
• 
  Gravestone for Titus Iulius Tuttius
• 
  Gravestone for gladiator Aquilus (1st half of the 1st century)
• 
  Gravestone for the slave trader Caius Aiacius
• 
  Tombstone of the veteran Marcus Valerius Celerinus and his wife Marcia Procula
• 
  Consecration altar of Titus Flavius ​​Constans (Prefect of the Praetorian Guard) in 165 AD.
• 
  Roman pottery
• 
  Oil lamps
• 
  Erotic oil lamp

Books

• Gerta Wolff: The Roman-Germanic Cologne. A Guide to the Roman-Germanic Museum and City of Cologne. J. P. Bachem: Cologne, 2002, ISBN 3-7616-1371-7

External links

• Römisch-Germanisches Museum
• www.colonia3d.de, computer aided animations and renderings of CCAA by Köln International School of Design (in German and English)