A village beside the fort<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Kapersburg is one of the best-preserved forts on the Upper German-Raetian Limes in Hesse, the office says. For about 150 years it housed an auxiliary unit called the Numerus Nidensium. The unit took its name from Nida, the Roman town under today’s Frankfurt-Heddernheim.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Limes was the fortified frontier of the Roman Empire in this part of Europe. It runs for about 342 miles (550 kilometers) through four German states, according to the LfDH page on the frontier<\/a>. UNESCO added it to the Frontiers of the Roman Empire World Heritage site in 2005.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Louis Jacobi and the Reich Limes Commission dug at the fort more than 125 years ago, and later work also focused on the fort. Since 2024, hessenARCH\u00c4OLOGIE and Goethe University Frankfurt have been studying the vicus instead. That is the civilian village that grew up a few yards farther into the woods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The temple turned up at the edge of the current excavation area. Archaeologists from the Saalburg Roman Fort museum<\/a> uncovered its walls. Katharina Grieshaber of the Saalburg later explained to a television crew how the team came across the building.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Besides the walls, the excavators found two more votive stones. Worshippers set up these carved blocks for a god, often to fulfill a vow. Their inscriptions can name the person who paid for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the key objects from the temple is the small statuette of Victoria, the goddess of victory. The broken pieces of a second statue probably belong to Mars, the god of the temple, the LfDH says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Professor Markus Scholz of Goethe University Frankfurt is already studying the inscriptions on the new stones. He also translated a votive stone found during the previous season. That stone is now on display at the Wehrturm Museum<\/a> in nearby Rosbach vor der H\u00f6he.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The temple survived in such good shape largely because nobody farmed above it. Plowing breaks up shallow archaeological layers<\/a> and mixes objects from different periods. Untouched woodland can keep them in order.<\/p>\n\n\n\n District archaeologist and Limes coordinator Kai M\u00fcckenberger leads the team with excavation director Manuel Pieper. “We have layers of preservation here that are unmatched elsewhere in Hesse, because no farming has gone over them,” M\u00fcckenberger said in remarks translated from German.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He added that “the forest has preserved everything over the past centuries.” As a result, the team finds layers that are usually gone at other sites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The woods also make the work slow. The forest setting rules out heavy machinery, so the digging is done almost entirely by hand, according to the office.<\/p>\n\n\n\nVotive stones and Victoria<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"Broken](\"https:\/\/www.ecoticias.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/victoria-statuette-kapersburg.jpg\")
Layers the forest kept<\/h2>\n\n\n\n