 The story about the former glory and downfall of Viminacium, an ancient Roman city and military camp, has for some time now engaged the public’s attention both at home and abroad. Over 450 hectares of the broader and 220 hectares of the inner city perimeter occupied by this site have until recently been buried beneath arable land with archaeological items strewn across the fields.
 The so-called city of the dead or the Viminacium necropolis had been excavated over the last three decades of the 20th century in a process during which more than 14,000 were discovered. In the more recent period, an interdisciplinary team of experts headed by Dr. Miomir Korać of the Serbian Arts and Sciences Academy (SANU) Archaeological Institute in Belgrade has been engaged in excavating this former Roman city and military camp. The project has rallied archaeologists, geophysicists, electrical engineers, geologists, petrology specialists, researchers applying distance detection and 3D technology experts - these latter to identify and contrive the contours. Their task: after many centuries to bring forth to light from below the fields’ surface the squares, temples, theaters, hippodrome, baths, streets and other city sections and to offer them for viewing as part of the world and Serbian cultural heritage as well as a recognizable symbol in what is Serbia today of this formerly important Roman region on the Danube.
 The villages of Stari Kostolac and Drmno, just 13 kilometers away from the city of Požarevac, lie atop of remains of the principal city of the Roman province of Upper Moesia, or, as it was called in late antiquity - Moesia Prima. Thus, we also learn from historical sources that Viminacium was a major military stronghold at which the 7th Claudian legion (Legio VII Claudia Pia Fidelis) was stationed and that following archeological excavations in the last quarter of the 20th century emerged a city at the crossroads of the East and the West with a very dynamic 600-year-long history.
It was the high appeal of Viminacium, whose goods were marketed beyond the confines of the province, that accounted for a variety of its art workshops, as testified to by a legacy riddled with the most significant and beautiful frescoed tombs of late antiquity.
The highlight of the archaeological tourism offer is the scientific- research center, dubbed Domus Scientiarum Viminacium, currently still under construction. It has an atmosphere remarkably redolent of ancient Rome and here visitors can become whatever they wished - archaeologists, legionaries or emperors.
 Project director Dr. Miomir Korać notes that Domus Scientiarum was conceived as a multi-purpose facility. In addition to Serbian and foreign scientists being able to use its premises - studies, libraries and atria - for their research and work with students, summer schools and courses, conventions and thematic meetings will also be held here, while at the same time they will have served also as accommodation for tourists already showing an ever-growing interest in visiting Viminacium.
- This facility was designed to appear as two-level rustic Roman- style villa: the one level being where the working and accommodation space is and the other, subterranean level accommodating the museum, storage space and halls. The upper level has a number of atria clustered with workshops, laboratories and rooms accommodating expert teams and visitors and where individual specialists will be conducting their work. There is also a library with a reading room, a documentation center, a kitchen with a dining room and a replica of the Roman thermae (baths) with a capacity of a smaller spa center. The lower level is a partially isolated section enjoying heightened security and stricter air-conditioning control because of the museum holdings (collection and storage) - says Dr. Korać.
 Viminacium is nested on a very attractive site along the Danube. This allows tourists to come by water as well. The environs of the Domus abound in landscaped and architectural wholes designed to ensure additional protection to the facility structures from excessive heat during the summer and from great cold in the winter period. Visitors to Viminacium will find the pleasant setting especially pleasing, when enjoying, if only briefly, respite from urban commotion and work on archeological sites.
Considering the impressive results the archaeological excavations at this site have yielded over the past decade, Dr. Korać is an optimist as regards its further prospects.
- I see Viminacium as a Watercity in 10 to 15 years time. Millions of tourists could be coming this way in the future. Pompeii have recorded eleven million tourists, and we are preparing to outdo them in ten or so years - our collocutor assures us, as the construction of the majestic Roman villa - Domus Scientiarum Viminacium - is nearing completion.
 A special attraction of the archaeological park will be the prehistoric site at which an entire skeleton of a mammoth was discovered last year. The skeleton - some five million years old - was found 350 meters due east of the imperial mausoleum. The area where the mammoth’s skeleton was found is actually the ancient site of the Morava River delta that the receding Pannonian Sea created. The skeleton was that of a very rare species of mammoth - a female, about sixty years old, some 4.5 meters tall and about five meters long, weighing nearly ten tons. So far, the remains of only some twenty skeletons of mammoths have been found, most of them in the course of the 19th century. However, not one remained and was preserved where it had been found. For this reason, this particular skeleton is special, as visitors will have a singular opportunity - right next to Viminacium itself - to experience prehistory under special conditions, i.e. at the depth of thirty meters and in a setting resembling that of the Myocene era.
A pontoon-like dock was built at Viminacium in March 2006 affording access by large riverboats as well. A total of 67,000 tourists visited Viminacium in 2009, of which number 55,000 arrived by riverboats. Under an agreement with European shippers, some 100,000 tourists are due here in the 2010/2011 season, notwithstanding the 150,000 of those expected to arrive by land route.
- By 2015, we intend have 700 ships with 250,000 tourists onboard stop at Viminacium, asserts Miomir Korać, along with noting that Domus, as a highly attractive place, could begin making profit already in three-four years. | 
