Rolf Skrypzak will never forget his 13th birthday: that was when he went on an excavation for the first time, accompanied by a volunteer archaeologist, one of his father's colleagues.

He was even allowed to help - with the excavation of a cemetery in the Seligenstadt district of Klein-Welzheim in the Offenbach district.

Not a long way for a youth who comes from this church.

But historically, a tremendous distance;

the graves were 1500 years old.

Life even granted the birthday boy a find back then.

Skrypzak can still see the glass beads that he discovered in the ground that day: “brightly colored, yellow-green and blue”.

And he got something else on his 13th birthday: his inner calling.

"The exciting thing is that you never know what's going to come out of the ground at the next moment," says the fifty-year-old, summing up his passion for archaeology.

The first assignment as an excavator was followed by others.

Skrypzak then did his civilian service in the State Office for the Preservation of Monuments in Wiesbaden;

He then completed an apprenticeship as an excavation technician.

He knows the Frankfurt underground like hardly anyone, because he has been working for the Frankfurt Monuments Office since 2006.

He has been digging in the Heddernheim district for a long time;

for a good year on the property at In der Römerstadt 120-134.

Here, as in the entire surrounding area, the following applies: “Roman finds come to light on almost every square meter of undisturbed ground.

" Also in the winter?

"We work in wind and weather," says the man from the practice, who likes to gather his long goatee with a rubber band.

"The ground is only a few centimeters frozen, and you can train to endure the cold."

6000 people on about 50 hectares

The street that is now called In der Römerstadt was actually once an ancient highway.

As the "Platea novi vici" it ran through the town of Nida, which emerged from a military post founded by the Roman conquerors around 70 AD in the area of ​​today's districts of Heddernheim and Praunheim.

In the second and third centuries, Nida was the capital of the Roman administrative district of Civitas Tauensium.

Around 6,000 people lived here on around 50 hectares in the shadow of a city wall that was almost three kilometers long and several meters high.

"Frankfurt's history began long before Charlemagne," the director of the Archaeological Museum, Wolfgang David, never tires of emphasizing.

This is impressively illustrated by the outstanding Roman finds in his museum: giant columns of Jupiter from the site of the Roman town, frescoes, coins, clothing pins, tools, earthenware, glasses, reliefs, statues.

Among the most famous exhibits from Nida are the finds from the painter's grave - 29 clay pots with remains of paint, dishes and an oil lamp.