Segedunum

01 The reconstructed outline

Segedunum is the most completely excavated fort anywhere on Hadrian's Wall — the full layout of barrack blocks, stables, the headquarters building, and the commander's house is visible from ground level, and from the top of a purpose-built 35-metre viewing tower overlooking the whole site. A full-scale reconstructed Roman bathhouse stands between the fort and the River Tyne, on the spot where the original bathhouse's remains were rediscovered in 2014.

02 Who was posted here

The identity of Segedunum's earliest garrison isn't recorded, but by the 2nd century the 600-strong Second Cohort of Nervians (originally raised in what's now Belgium) held the fort; the Notitia Dignitatum, a late-Roman list of military postings, records the part-mounted Fourth Cohort of Lingones — 480 infantry and 120 cavalry — in place by the 3rd and 4th centuries.

03 A claim no other fort can make

Because the site was protected by a Victorian shipyard rather than centuries of stone-robbing and ploughing, Segedunum is the only place anywhere in the former western Roman Empire where a complete Roman fort's ground plan — every building, every internal road — can be seen at once from a single vantage point.

04 How it got here

The modern excavation and museum project cost around £9 million and ran from January 1997 to June 2000, at times employing over 100 archaeologists on site — a scale of investigation only possible because the site had been protected by former industrial use (a Victorian shipyard once stood here) rather than centuries of stone-robbing and farming, unlike much of the wall's central section.

05 Visiting

Segedunum sits directly on the Tyne & Wear Metro network in Wallsend, a direct, well-under-half-an-hour ride from Newcastle Central Station — the single easiest fort on this list to reach without a car.