King Solomon’s Towers : New results on the Roman and medieval building history of the fortifications on Sibrik Hill

Abstract

The King Matthias Museum of the Hungarian National Museum relaunched its research in 2013 on Sibrik Hill, located approximately 1.5 km from the present-day town of Visegrád, on the area of a Roman era fortification and medieval comitate centre. Numerous unique finds have been discovered in the past eight years, which proved that following the 5th century AD the fortification was already in use again by the first half of the 9th century and it retained its importance until the first third of the 13th century. Katalin Boruzs excavated the southwestern part of the fort between 2019–2021, which revealed two Roman era towers and two previously unknown medieval towers as well. These new findings facilitated the revision of the periodisation established by earlier excavations, revealing a formerly unknown epoch in the medieval history of the castle.