By The European Times | Created at 2026-10-02 08:42:05 | Updated at 2026-10-03 14:44:08
1 day ago
A blacksmith, a groom, a soldier, a slave: the faces and stories of these and other inhabitants of an ancient Roman city in modern-day Hungary have been brought back to life with astonishing accuracy in a new exhibition in Budapest, the Associated Press reported in July (as cited by BTA).
The exhibition, which runs until October 31, presents highly detailed facial reconstructions based on more than a dozen skulls found in the ancient city of Aquincum—once a bustling Roman settlement on the empire’s Danube frontier.
Visitors to the Aquincum Museum come face-to-face with hyper-realistic models of people from the Roman era, each created using DNA analysis and other archaeological and anthropological methods to determine what these individuals looked like in life nearly 2,000 years ago.
“Our main goal was to bring these people closer to today’s audience,” said Lóránt Vas, an archaeologist and one of the exhibition’s curators.
Titled “We Were Once Like You,” the exhibition seeks to answer questions about ordinary people in ancient societies: What did they look like? What were their names? What was their fate?
Experts at the Aquincum Museum use DNA analysis of the recovered bones to determine skin, hair, and eye color, as well as whether the individual had freckles. The shape, density, and other characteristics of the skull reveal details about facial structure, as well as the individual’s age and whether they had suffered injuries or diseases.
Based on these findings, the curators devise names, professions, and life stories for each of the reconstructed figures, breathing new life into them.
Péter Vámos, another of the exhibition’s curators, explained that the fictionalized details are “based on authentic historical facts” as well as information gathered from analyzing the skulls displayed beneath the reconstructions.
“We tried to incorporate everything that anthropology and genetic research can tell us about their life stories,” he said.
One of the figures—a construction worker named Respectus—is described as someone who earned his living in Aquincum by plastering walls and splitting stone blocks. The exhibition notes that this work left its mark on his bones; additionally, his nose was broken and a tooth knocked out during a drunken brawl at a local tavern.
Respectus’s history and social status are typical of many of the depicted residents of Aquincum. Vámos added that studies show the bones of almost all the individuals exhibit a “fairly high degree” of inflammation.
“They engaged in physical labor and, in many cases, suffered periods of starvation,” he said. Of the 16 reconstructions, six are silicone casts to which realistic hair, clothing, and jewelry have been meticulously added.
Another valuable piece of information DNA can reveal is a person’s ethnic origin—something that sheds light on the diverse population of Aquincum.
Analyses show the presence not only of people originating from the heart of the empire—modern-day Italy—but also of individuals from places as distant as modern-day Scotland and Syria, as well as members of nomadic tribes from the Eurasian steppes.
The inhabitants of Aquincum also included Celts, who had occupied the region during the Iron Age prior to Roman settlement.
The exhibition’s title “suggests that they were just like us today. They had the same professions, the same problems,” said Vas.
“They may have had different living conditions or social status, but people remain people,” he said. “I don’t think that has changed much over the millennia.”
Image: Visitors view Roman-era skulls and their facial reconstructions at the Aquincum Museum exhibition titled “We Were Once Like You,” which presents characters and fictionalized life stories of those who once lived in the bustling Roman settlement of Aquincum in Budapest. Photo: Bela Szandelszky/AP/BTA
