Trevor Bloom – Author

Lot of interest at the moment in Kalkriese, the site of the Varian disaster, where three Roman legions, plus cavalry and auxiliaries, were annihilated as they returned to their winter quarters on the Rhine. Since Tony Clunn first discovered the site in the late 1980s over 5,000 artefacts have been discovered including slingbolts, coins, harness fragments and armour.

I visited Kalkriese a couple of years ago with Christian, a German friend. It was a cold, wet and misty day and it was not difficult to imagine what it would have been like for the Romans, soaked and chilled to the bone, sloshing through ankle-deep mud while trying to defend themselves from the arrows and javelins arcing out of the trees.

As you can see, the site today is wooded but not impenetrable. Although the landscape has been drained and cleared over the years, it has probably not changed dramatically. Archaeologists believe the area was settled and farmed long before the battle took place.

The new museum is very bleak and austere and looks like an aircraft shed. They are recreating the vegetation of the period, and have reconstructed the turf rampart that was a feature of the battle.

The destruction of Varus’ legions was a devastating setback for imperial expansionist ambitions. It created a boundary between Latin and Germanic cultures that still exists . Fascinating to think how different Europe would be today if Arminius had failed. Most likely, Germania would have fallen under Roman rule and would have become a romance-speaking country. The two world wars would never have happened.