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The city of Sarmizegetusa is the capital of pre-Roman Dacia, located on the hill of Grădiștea Muncelului, in the Orăștiei Mountains (Hunedoara County, Romania).
The main military, religious and political center of Dacia, the residence of the Dacian kings. The city was destroyed by the Romans in 106 AD.
Intensive excavations have been carried out here since 1950. The settlement is located at an altitude of 1,200 m, has a length of about 3 km. At the top of the plan was located a hexagonal stone fortress with gates and towers facing east and west.
Remains of wooden structures were found inside (for the refuge of the garrison and the inhabitants from the enemies). From the east gate a paved road led to the so-called sacred fence - the complex of religious buildings, officially dated to the 1-2 century BC.
The most interesting are two round shrines.
The small one (with a diameter of about 12 m) represents a circle of stone pillars; the largest (with a diameter of about 30 m) - several concentric circles (made of stone blocks, stone pillars and wood).
The grouping of columns in the first sanctuary is associated with the astronomical observations of the Dacians, in the second sanctuary - with the old Dacian calendar.
The quadrilateral fortress of massive stone blocks (murus dacicus), was built on five terraces and covered an area of about 30,000 m².
Around the fortress and the sacred fence were the houses of the Dacian nobility, acareturi, workshops. Lots of tools, painted pottery, various articles of copper, iron, clay, as well as Greek and Roman coins, crockery and other objects brought from the cities of the Black Sea Coast and the Roman Empire were found.
The discoveries of archaeologists in those places demonstrate a high level of life of Dacian society: in the houses of the nobility were drawn ceramic water pipes.
