page_title: Austrian walled towns
section_title: Towns with Roman fortifications
hierarchical_section_title: Austrian walled towns / Types of town wall and layout / Towns with Roman fortifications
caption_attribution_description: English: Stadtmauer (Wels). Showing the Roman wall with salvaged Roman bricks above and capped by the Medieval city wall.
context_page_description: Walled towns in Austria started to appear in the 11th century. Their establishment was closely connected with the development of Austria as a march of the Holy Roman Empire and in particular by the Stauffenberg Emperors and their Marcher Lords, the Babenbergs. In present-day Austria, there are 106 towns or cities that were walled. The walls of Radstadt, Freiburg, Hainburg and Drosendorf survive almost intact, and Austria has some of the most impressive walled towns in Europe.
  Other cities or towns such as Vienna, Salzburg and St Pölten have had their defences almost completely obliterated. In Austria, the procedure for granting civic status or creating a Stadt was relatively simple. Initially, a local lord or official ministerialis could petition for market rights or Marktrect. At that point, the town would be laid out by a surveyor and it would have been surrounded by an earthen-banked enclosure surmounted with a vertical wooden palisade. Often a stone gatehouse or Tor would be built for the collection of custom dues from traders coming to the market.
context_section_description: These include towns with Roman defences that were re-fortified in the 12th and 13th centuries, which formed part of the Roman "limes", which were to the south of the Danube These include the Flavian (late 1st century AD) auxiliary forts at Mautern, Traismauer, Tulln, possibly Pochlarn, and the Legionary fortress at Vienna. 
   At Traismauer the Medieval defences almost exactly correspond with the rectangular auxiliary fort, while at Mautern the walls match the auxiliary fort together with the third century extension to the north. But at Tulln and Vienna, the medieval walled area was larger than the Roman fort. The walls of Roman towns were also incorporated into later town walls at Linz, St. Pölten and Wels. At Salzburg, the site of the Roman "municipium" of Iuvarum underlies most of the Altstadt. In the 4th century, the Roman Emperor Valentinian I re-organised the Roman defences along the Danube by building a series of watchtowers or "Burgi", which were sometimes built into earlier fortifications. It is now recognised that the large bastion-shaped tower at Mautern is not medieval, but Roman. There are also similar Roman towers attached to the walls at Traismauer and Tulln.
caption: Town walls at Wels-original Roman wall, then re-used Roman tile with Medieval wall over.
exif: {"Image Make": "Canon", "Image Model": "Canon DIGITAL IXUS 80 IS", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "QuickTime 7.7.1", "Image DateTime": "2014:02:08 22:48:26", "Image HostComputer": "Mac OS X 10.7.5", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image ExifOffset": "258", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "3382", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "7042", "Thumbnail YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/125", "EXIF FNumber": "8", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "80", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0220", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2010:07:11 12:00:39", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2010:07:11 12:00:39", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "3", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "223/32", "EXIF ApertureValue": "6", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "95/32", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, auto mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "31/5", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "3264", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2448", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "43520/3", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "2448000/169", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "2", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "1", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard"}