Ulpiana

Ulpiana, also Ulpianum, was a Roman city in the province of Moesia Superior ( Upper Moesia ). Its ruins are located about ten kilometers southeast of Pristina in Kosovo. In the immediate vicinity there is the monastery of Gracanica.

The place was inhabited by the Illyrians since the 8th century BC. In the written sources of the place appeared to the time of Emperor Hadrian on ( 117-138 AD), when he gave him the name Ulpiana the status of a municipium; the name of the place, however, refers to Hadrian's predecessor Trajan, who belonged to the gens Ulpia. Since the administrative reforms of the emperor Diocletian, the town belonged to the province of Dardania. Due to an earthquake Ulpiana was destroyed in the year 518. Emperor Justinian ( 527-565 AD ) came from the region, whose family suggesting a Thracian origin of the family; he left the city rebuild and named it Iustiniana Secunda ( Iustiniana Prima was further north in the birthplace of the emperor). The city was walled, and beside it a castrum with a floor area of 400 × 400 meters was created to protect them. Iustiniana Secunda was also the seat of a bishop; to the diocese goes back the titular Ulpiana the Roman Catholic Church. In the late 6th or early 7th century, when the Slavs in the Balkans plundered and colonized, the city was destroyed and abandoned.

From 1953 to 1987 carried out extensive excavations. Found among other things, an Iron Age cemetery, the fortifications, an early Christian basilica, mosaics and ceramic sculptures. In the vicinity of the excavated ruins lies the modern city Lipljan. Recently, German and French archaeologists have begun again with soundings.

790799
de