Alba Iulia had a very important contribution to the history of human settlings and fortified citadels.
The city is situated at an old gold and salt commercial crossroads, into the perimeter formed by the rivers Ampoi and Sebes and the crests of the Apuseni Mountains that mount mildly and lithely towards the terrace of the river Mures and the Transylvanian Hills. The gentle climate and the richness of the soil rendered this area habitable even since ancient times. Archeologists register rich vestiges of the material culture - dating since Neolithic, Bronze Era, Hallstatt, Latene and Middle Ages - undeniable proof of our continuity on these territories.
The tribe of the Dacians from "the far-off Appulus" is mentioned in "Consolatio ad Liviam - Poetae latini minores", and the geographer Ptolemaios revealed in his "Geographical Guide" (written in the first half of the second century) the coordinates of the city: 49°15' longitude - 46° 41' latitude.
The XIII Gemina Legion is to be billeted here in one of the major stoned Roman camps during the years Dacia was a Roman province. Along with the Dacians, the new comers (the Romans), "ex toto orbe romano", are the ancestors of the Romanian people, appropriating the Dacian ancient toponym Apoulon (a fortress situated at Piatra Craivii, 20 km North of Alba Iulia, which became the Roman Apulum).
Two roman cities, first municipia and later collonia, have developed near the Roman camps, into the fortress, but also nearby the Mures river, in Partos.
The settlings became two of the most wealthy and important places of Dacia - ("Chrysopolis" 251-253 d. Chr.) - outstanding in diversity and the novelty of the local civilization.
Temples and polychrome mosaics, thermae and statues, amphitheaters, porticos, the governor's palace "Daciarum Trium" - that would be in brief the synthesis of this important military-political, economic-commercial and cultural-artistic center, the miniature copy of the mother Rome.
Imperialism had irreversibly and unmistakably marked the existence and the consciousness of the Romanced popular Latin speaker inhabitants.
This was the beginning of a new world - orbs romana. The settling continuity, the pre-early and late feudal towns and graveyards, the hoards, the rotunda baptistery uncovered from the Roman-Catholic Cathedral's floor, the presence of Hyeroteos who came here straight from Constantinopol, indicate the existence of a Christian world with Byzantine background and of an important political center - the Principality of Bãlgrad.