A Roman shrine with traces of sacrificial rites uncovered beneath Frankfurt

Hesse’s heritage protection service (Hessen Archäologie) announced on 5 April 2026 that, during the preparation of a site for a residential complex in the south-east of Frankfurt, archaeologists had uncovered the remains of a Roman shrine with sacrificial pits, now the subject of a preliminary research campaign. The site forms part of what the Romans knew as Nida, a settlement in the Roman province of Germania Superior that in the 2nd century was the administrative seat of what is now the Frankfurt area. The find was carried by Germany’s public broadcaster ZDF and the science portal ScienceDaily.

The excavations have exposed a rectangular platform around 9 metres long and 6 wide, in the middle of which a pit about 1.2 metres deep has been identified, filled with potsherds, animal bones (mostly cattle and pigs) and several lead plates with incised inscriptions that may be prayers or curses. Alongside the central pit, three smaller depressions have been found with the remains of libation vessels (for pouring wine or oil as offerings to the gods), as well as fragments of votive figurines. The pottery types and the construction style, the service says, date the site to the first half of the 2nd century AD, matching the reign of the Emperor Hadrian (117-138).

In methodological terms, the archaeologists used a combined approach: open excavation on site together with geophysical surveying of the surrounding plots (radar and magnetometry), which allowed the layout of the structure to be mapped before the destructive excavation phase. The lead plates with inscriptions are currently being conserved in the laboratory of Goethe University in Frankfurt, where they will be read with multispectral imaging and, if necessary, microfocus X-ray analysis. According to researcher Thomas Maurer of the Hessen service, first reading results are expected at the end of the summer.

What the find says about religious practice

Roman shrines with sacrificial pits are relatively well documented in the German provinces, but each new find brings specific detail about local adaptations. In Nida, a multicultural settlement with Roman incomers, Germanic tribes and traders from the eastern Mediterranean, religious practice often interwove cults dedicated to the gods of the Capitoline Triad (Jupiter, Juno, Minerva) with local deities. According to the German Archaeological Institute (DAI), the wider Nida-Frankfurt area has so far yielded eight documented votive sites, most of them with a focus on the water-earth sphere, in keeping with the fact that the settlement was built in a valley prone to flooding.

What makes this find particularly interesting, in the assessment of archaeologist Maurer, is the possibility that some of the lead plates may contain so-called defixiones, formal curses addressed to the gods of the underworld to harm a named individual. In Roman religious practice, defixiones were written on lead plaques or thin sheets, folded or pierced with nails and deposited in water, graves or shrines. If the identification is confirmed, this site would be one of only a handful in the German provinces where defixiones have been found in an unambiguous shrine context.

The limits of this find are worth stressing. The dating to the first half of the 2nd century rests on ceramic typologies, which carry an inbuilt uncertainty of about 30 to 50 years. Second, the identification of the deity to whom the shrine was dedicated is not yet possible, since no inscription with an explicit theonym (the name of a god) has been found. Third, the animal bones will be analysed by the radiocarbon method, which will allow a more precise chronology, but those results also carry an uncertainty of plus or minus 40 years for the period of the Roman Empire. The German team’s final report is expected in 2028, after the multi-year conservation and analysis programme wraps up.