The Roman city of Aquincum stood on the territory of today's Budapest at the end of the 1st century AD. Today, it is the best-preserved civilian Roman settlement in Hungary, with a covered museum and an open-air archaeological park.

Roman Aquincum's period of greatest glory was roughly between 124 and 200 AD, when it was the largest in its history, with churches, shops and strong defensive walls being built here. From the 4th century onwards, however, Germanic tribes and the Huns began to increasingly invade the area, and after 430 the Romans abandoned the city completely, and from the 6th century onwards it fell into disrepair until it was completely destroyed.

It was not until the mid-20th century that archaeologists began to discover the size and importance of this city, and the greatest expansion of exposures occurred even after 2007.