The Romans built the first fortress on the left bank of the Danube in Iža - in the forecourt of the Brigetio legion camp - during the reign of Emperor Marcus Aurelius (161-180), during the so-called Marcomannic Wars. This wooden camp was destroyed after a short time by fire during an unexpected Germanic attack.
During one of the punitive expeditions at the end of the Marcomannic wars, several Roman military units camped here for a short time in temporary field fortifications near the probably already ruined fortress.
At the end of the 2nd century, the Romans built a stone castle in the outskirts of Brigetia on the site of a destroyed log camp.
During the war events around the middle of the 3rd century, the castle was considerably damaged. In the 4th century, during the reign of the Constantines, an extensive reconstruction of the castle's fortifications took place. During the reign of Emperor Valentinian I. (364-375), the last structural modifications of the castle took place. Apparently, shortly after his death, this fortress was looted or abandoned. At the end of the 4th and the beginning of the 5th century, the territory of the castle was inhabited by mixed groups of native Germans and immigrants. After their departure, this space remained uninhabited. In the 10th century, a smaller settlement was founded not far from the former Roman fortress. Its inhabitants buried their dead here.
During the reign of Emperor Augustus (27 BC - 14 AD) around the turn of the calendar, the Romans extended their power into Central Europe and pushed the boundaries of the empire to the Danube. They soon established a new province of Pannonia in the conquered territory between the Eastern Alps and the Danube, where mainly Pannonian and Celtic tribes lived until then. The course of the Danube became its northern and eastern border for the next four centuries, as well as the border of the entire Roman Empire.
In the same period, Germanic Suebi tribes began to penetrate the areas north of the middle Danube. The Marcomani settled in the territory of today's southern Moravia and Lower Austria, and the Kvádi in southwestern Slovakia. Mutual Roman-Germanic relations began in the 1st century. after Christ initially developed favorably. Although Germanic kings such as Vannius of Kvad, as well as his successors Vangio, Sido and Italicus, became vassals of the Romans, they made proper use of the location of their seats. They benefited significantly from gifts for maintaining friendship and peace and from border exchange, but especially from long-distance trade on the so-called The Amber Road, which led from the northern Adriatic to the Baltic. Its individual branches passed through the Markoman and Kvad territories. A noticeable increase in the population, as well as an increase in the strength and power of the Transdanubian Germans, already at the end of the 1st century. manifested in an effort to break free from vassal dependence.
The Roman fortress in Iža became the subject of scientific research only at the end of the 19th, and especially in the 20th century. Current knowledge about its history and construction development is the result of several archaeological investigations. The first of them was led by a native of Ižan, a passionate amateur archaeologist János Tóth-Kurucz (5.5.1878 Iža - 6.3.1969 Dunaalmás). The Roman fortress in his birthplace interested him so much that, although he worked as a high school professor in Budapest, he spent several years researching it. During excavations in 1906-1909, 1912 and 1913, he managed to uncover and document a large part of its area. He compiled a floor plan of the fortress, which is still valid in many respects to this day. He continuously published and summarized the results of his excavations in a monograph on the Pannonian limit.
His pioneering work was followed up by Jaroslav Böhm in 1932 with research on external moat fortification. Extensive field work was carried out here in 1955-1956 under the leadership of Bedřich Svoboda, research in 1957 was led by Mária Lamiová-Schmiedlová. Since 1978, the SAV Archaeological Institute in Nitra has been the guarantor of current archaeological research, monument restoration and presentation of this ancient architectural monument.
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