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Hidden gem1st – 4th c. ADFree

Centum Prata

Kempraten

city · See-Gaster District, St. Gallen, Switzerland

What it is
Centum Prata was a Roman village on the eastern shore of Lake Zurich, at Kempraten in the town of Rapperswil-Jona; the walls of its forum, with a standing column, lie open on a lawn among the houses, and en.wikipedia calls it the most important Gallo-Roman site in the canton of St. Gallen.
What you’ll see
The forum, the marketplace with its town hall, is on the Meienbergstrasse (Kantonsarchäologie St. Gallen).
Worth the trip?
Only if you are already in Rapperswil or on the lake: the remains are low walls in a residential quarter, honestly presented but modest, and a stroll between the forum, the Römerwiese and the chapel of St. Ursula is the whole visit.
Getting there & cost
Kempraten station is mapped about 80 m from the point, and car parks about 40 m (OpenStreetMap). The remains are outdoors among the houses; no source publishes hours or a charge.Free · No charge is published or mappedHours, tickets and parking
Low stone foundation walls laid out on a lawn, with a single column standing at one corner and three information panels on posts, among houses.
The forum on the Meienbergstrasse, with its column and information panels. · Photo: Roland zh · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Two large dressed stone blocks, one laid on the other, the upper one marked with diagonal tool lines, against a rubble wall with snow lying on it.
Dressed stone blocks in the forum walls. · Photo: Roland zh · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons
A short, thick length of rough stone wall lying in a grassy slope, with a small white plaque fixed on top and bare shrubs behind.
Roman wall remains at the chapel of St. Ursula. · Photo: Roland zh · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons

What is there today

The forum, the marketplace with its town hall, is on the Meienbergstrasse (Kantonsarchäologie St. Gallen). What you see there is a set of low foundation walls on a lawn, one column standing at a corner and information panels (Wikimedia Commons). In the Römerwiese the remains of a potter’s house are preserved (Kantonsarchäologie St. Gallen), and more Roman wall remains lie beside the chapel of St. Ursula (Wikimedia Commons). Further find sites lie at the church of St. Martin in Busskirch and the parish church in Jona, and the piles of a Roman bridge across the lake between Rapperswil and Hurden were probably connected with the settlement (de.wikipedia).

A mithraeum is recorded about 600 m south of the forum point (Wikidata); nothing of it is described as on show.

Is it worth the trip?

Only if you are already in Rapperswil or on the lake: the remains are low walls in a residential quarter, honestly presented but modest, and a stroll between the forum, the Römerwiese and the chapel of St. Ursula is the whole visit. For readers interested in how a small Roman roadside town worked, the panels on site and the cantonal archaeology service’s material make it more than a patch of grass.

Getting there

Kempraten station is mapped about 80 m from the point, and car parks about 40 m (OpenStreetMap). The remains are outdoors among the houses; no source publishes hours or a charge.

Visiting details

Opening hours
Open-air remains in Kempraten; no source publishes opening hours.
Tickets
No charge is published or mapped.
Parking
Car parks about 40 m from the point (OpenStreetMap).

History

A vicus is attested at Kempraten from the 1st to the 4th century, the most important find site in the canton of St. Gallen. It was a staging post where the roads from Zurich and Winterthur met the Alpine route to Chur and Italy, and an economic centre for the area around, with houses and workrooms for craftsmen, merchants, innkeepers and carters; a cremation cemetery lay on its eastern edge (HLS). Whether its name was Centum Prata, “a hundred meadows”, is disputed: the forms Centoprato and Centiprata appear only in 741/744 and 863 (HLS), and Pleiades notes that no Roman text of its own time gives the name.

Nearby

  • A tall square corner tower of rough stone and a long curtain wall running along the top of a grassy slope, lit by low evening sun.

    Photo: Roland zh · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Commons

    13 km · fort · Pfäffikon District, Zurich

    Irgenhausen Roman fort

    The fort is a square about 60 m across, with four corner towers and three more towers along the sides; stone remains inside were probably a bath (en.wikipedia).

  • The low stone walls of a small room around a floor of grey mortar, crossed by an X of narrow channels edged with stones and brick, with grass and loose stone blocks beyond.

    Photo: Roland zh · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Commons

    35 km · villa · Bülach District, Zurich

    Roman estate of Seeb

    The ruins were excavated between 1958 and 1969 and partly conserved (the welcome board; it.wikipedia has systematic excavation from 1963 to 1970).

  • Low walls of rubble stone forming small rooms under an open timber roof, with rows of short square brick pillars standing in one room and tile slabs laid over pillars in another.

    Photo: Adrian Michael · CC BY 3.0 · Commons

    42 km · villa · Bremgarten District, Aargau

    Roman villa of Sarmenstorf

    Only the bath wing is still visible: after the excavations every other wall was covered over again, and the baths are protected by a shelter (Municipality of Sarmenstorf).

Straight-line distances.

Sources

Every fact on this page comes from the records below, each used under the licence noted.

SourceLicence
Pleiades 187438CC BY
Wikidata Q8987384CC0
OpenStreetMap node/2953670478ODbL
Wikidata — Mithraeum of Kempraten (Q140421930)licence not recorded
Wikipedia (de) — Centum PrataCC BY-SA 4.0
Wikipedia (en) — Centum PrataCC BY-SA 4.0
Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz — Kempraten (Alois Stadler)licence not recorded
KGS inventory 8242 — Kempraten, römischer Vicus (BABS)licence not recorded
Kantonsarchäologie St. Gallen — Ausflugszielelicence not recorded