Roman Repositories

The Small Scale Scenery continues to grow – we’ve now hit product code 200 ! This week we have a pair of Roman releases from the early C.4th, both from Trier (known by the Romans as Augusta Treverorum) in the Rhineland, Germany.

The first is the Basilica of Constantine, also known as the Aula Palatina. A basilica was a general purpose public building used for holding courts, meetings and other public functions. They varied in size and grandeur depending on the size of the town. We already make the massive Basilica Maxentius in Rome, but this one is a slightly smaller offering. The building was later consecrated as the Church of the Redeemer within the Evangelical Church of the Rhineland. The building still stands, although it has been modified and then restored over the centuries – it was also badly damaged during an air raid in 1944 and repaired after the war. So although it’s 1700+ years old, it could be used by Cold War gamers as part of a Germany city in the path of the advancing Warsaw Pact armies.

The second part of the release is this pair of warehouses or horrea. The original examples in Trier no longer exist above ground, the buildings were incorporated into a Benedictine abbey and then a vineyard was cultivated on the site. But remnants still exist in the cellar of a wine merchant later built on top of the foundations. Originally there were two warehouses separated by a courtyard – our pack consists of this model, and we’ve also included a single free-standing warehouse in the pack just because we thought it might be useful. These models would make great objective for a game where both sides are after the grain and other foodstuffs stored inside.

Much of the research for these models came from the chance acquisition of a book of Imperial Roman Architecture, purchased for the princely sum of £2 from a second-hand bookshop in Faversham ! This book has loads of other useful reference information; Trier (also the birthplace of Karl Marx) is particularly fertile ground. So expect our Roman city to keep growing.

SSS-8200 – Basilica of Constantine – £3.50
SSS-8201 – Roman Warehouses – £5.00