Egyptians, ROMANS AND HUNGARIANS?
The town of Szombathely in Western Hungary has one of the most important historical sights in the world. You might think that this town has gone mad by highlighting its Roman heritage everywhere, but what can the inhabitants do if they keep bumping into Roman shrines and ancient merchant roads?
Iseum, the former shrine built for the goddess Isis, is now extraordinarily renovated and provides a peculiar, eerily beautiful open air place for operas and plays during the summer. In the Ruin Garden, there are still the traces of a sanctuary for Mercurius and an eight-angled bath as well as the cobbles of the Amber Road which once sliced through whole Europe from the Baltic Sea to the Mediterranean.
The enormous temple complex is the third largest fully excavated Isis temple in the world – only the main churches in Alexandria and Rome were larger in size.
The works, which were completed in 2012, present a myriad of Iseum’s archaeological finds, and feature a historical exhibition of Pannonia, an ancient province of the Roman Empire.
The project involved revamping the central Isis shrine building, extending the former reception building and constructing a 1 000 m2 museum exhibition space. The works followed a uniform approach, ensuring that the new structures would match the city’s overall look and feel.
