Budapest Exhibition Reconstructs Faces of 16 Roman-Era Inhabitants

"Respectus," one of the reconstructed inhabitants of Aquincum, the Roman city north of Budapest's city center, at the local Roman Museum. Source: AP Photo/Bela Szandelszky

The Aquincum Roman Museum in Budapest has reconstructed the faces of 16 Roman-era inhabitants using modern methods for an exhibition. The result is reminiscent of today: "the same professions, the same problems."

Aquincum was a bustling settlement on the banks of the Danube. North of the camp of the Legio II Adiutrix (and for a few years the Legio X Gemina) lay a civilian city so significant that it was mentioned by Greek geographers like Claudius Ptolemy and recorded on Roman maps. Even in late antiquity, Sidonius Apollinaris called the city "mighty."

Southwest of the historic site, on both sides of the river, lies the center of Hungary's capital: the historic Buda district west of the Danube, and Pest on the eastern bank. The Roman Museum in Budapest-Aquincum now presents a special exhibition. Based on the analysis of over a dozen skulls from Aquincum's heyday in the middle and later imperial periods, the faces and personal stories of 16 inhabitants have been reconstructed.

"Our main goal was to bring some of these individuals closer to people today," says Loránt Vass, archaeologist and co-curator of the new exhibition. The exhibition, titled "Once We Were Like You," is initially on view until October 31, 2026, and again from spring 2027.

View of the Archaeological Park of Aquincum in northwestern Budapest. Source: picture alliance/Stuart Black/robertharding

On the surface, it addresses seemingly simple questions: What did people look like back then? What were their names? What do we know about their fates? To find out, the museum's experts used DNA analysis as well as modern methods from archaeology and anthropology. The result is realistic facial models combined with individual life stories.

From the archaeological finds, the genetic fingerprint allowed them to determine skin, hair, and eye color—and even whether someone had freckles. The shape, density, and other features of the skulls provided clues about the age and faces of the individuals, as well as whether they had suffered injuries or illnesses.

In the next step, the exhibition creators brought the nearly 2,000-year-old inhabitants of Aquincum to life in a certain way: They gave them names and, based on all available information, assigned them likely professions and biographies.

Visitors look at the reconstructed inhabitant of Aquincum with the (fictional) name Domitia decorata. Source: AP Photo/Bela Szandelszky

These details were compiled taking into account "authentic historical foundations" and the results of the skull analyses, says Péter Vámos, also a co-curator. "We included everything that anthropology and genetic studies could tell us about their life stories."

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