Durnovaria

Durnovaria was a Roman civitas capital at the site of modern Dorchester in Dorset, England, established around 70 AD after the Legio II Augusta garrison withdrew. Before Roman occupation, the regional centre was at the hillfort of Maiden Castle 2 miles southwest, where a war cemetery of inhabitants who resisted the invasion was excavated in the 1930s by Mortimer Wheeler. The Romans laid out an organized street plan with public buildings including thermae, an aqueduct from Whitfield Farm, and converted the ancient Maumbury Rings earthwork into an amphitheatre. The town features the only fully exposed Roman urban house in Britain, discovered in 1937-38, with exquisite mosaics and hypocaust underfloor heating. A substantial late-Roman Christian cemetery was also found at nearby Poundbury.