Cautiously we climb over the low brambles.

Then it goes, past decrepit trees, into the middle of the huge piece of meadow where a few Scottish highland cattle graze.

What a strange picture!

A hundred meters behind the shaggy horned cattle, five-story residential buildings from the Wilhelminian era rise up.

Your residents have drawn the main prize: in the heart of the city of Augsburg, they will have the wide view of the countryside to the east.

For a long time, the four-hectare area in the north of the city center belonged to a mechanical engineering factory, which only had a few director's villas built on park-like land and allotment gardens for their workers.

In the 1990s, the site was to be densely built on with apartments.

Nothing will come of it now.

In the meantime, the city has bought the site from the company with the help of the Free State of Bavaria.

Now the cattle graze here so that it doesn't become overgrown.

Ulf von Rauchhaupt

Editor in the “Science” section of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sunday newspaper.

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"I don't really know anything about plants," admits Sebastian Gairhos, "nor about cows." Nevertheless, the tall, friendly man is now responsible for this area north of the late medieval city wall.

Because Gairhos is in charge of Augsburg's city archeology, and under the cow pasture and the director's estate lies a fifth of the Roman city of Augusta Vindelicum, for more than four centuries the governor's seat and metropolis of the province of Raetia.

After the end of the Western Roman Empire, Augsburg shrank to a small area around the cathedral, but the city grew again in the High Middle Ages.

Then, at the time of the Fuggers, some of its residents were among the richest people in the world and erected magnificent Renaissance buildings - but Augsburg had grown mainly to the south,

where the final resting place of Saint Afra is venerated in the ancient burial ground along the road to Italy.

The north of the Roman city area, on the other hand, remained undeveloped from the end of antiquity until the late 19th century - and the larger part of it to this day.

"This ideal conservation situation is unique," says Sebastian Gairhos.

There is no such thing in the other Roman governor seats in what is now German territory, in Trier, Cologne and Mainz.

And obviously not the poorest Romans lived here.

"Because of the development plans, sondages were carried out in 1999 and 2000," explains the city archaeologist.

"A dense and multi-phase Roman building from the time of the first to fifth century AD was proven.

Among other things, there were representative residential buildings here, some of which were lavishly furnished – underfloor heating, mosaics, marble panelling, walls decorated with frescoes.”

But why not dig it up then?

Aren't archaeologists excited by the prospect of valuable finds and scientific knowledge about the urban structure of a largely complete and prosperous quarter of one of the most important Roman cities north of the Alps?

But that's not how it works.

The task of modern urban archeology is first and foremost to secure findings when a building project encounters archaeological monuments - which happens very often in downtown Augsburg.