Archaeologists Find a Roman Temple to Mars Just Below a German Forest Floor

Archaeologists digging in a forest north of Frankfurt have uncovered a Roman temple dedicated to Mars, the god of war, along with votive stones and a small statue of the goddess Victory. Hesse's state monument office announced the finds from the civilian settlement beside the Kapersburg Roman fort, and Good News Network brought the story to wider attention on October 14, 2026.

A village preserved by trees

Since 2024, state archaeologists and the University of Frankfurt have been excavating the settlement (the *vicus*) beside the fort, which sits on the Upper Germanic-Rhaetian Limes, the Roman frontier that is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Because farming never disturbed the ground, the remains lie only centimetres beneath the surface. The team works almost entirely by hand, since heavy machinery cannot be used in the forest.

"We have preservation layers here that are unmatched elsewhere in Hesse." — Kai Mückenberger, district archaeologist

What they found

• A temple to Mars, plus two further votive stones and a Victory statuette
• Traces of crafts, including the area of a smithy that the Romans later levelled and replaced with houses
• Roman road routes and terracing that help estimate the village's layout
• A late Roman brooch and handmade pottery, which the team describes as the first evidence of use of the site after the Romans left the frontier, possibly by the Alamanni

What's next

The fort's garrison, a unit called the Numerus Nidensium, was stationed there for about 150 years before the frontier was abandoned in the mid-third century. A University of Frankfurt scholar, Markus Scholz, is studying the inscriptions. Mückenberger hopes to continue digging next year with students, and the release stresses that research into the Roman presence in Hesse is far from complete.