Venta Belgarum

Venta Belgarum was a town in the Roman province of Britannia Superior and the civitas capital of the Belgae tribe, established around AD 70 on the site of what is now Winchester in southern England. The Romans diverted the River Itchen and built defensive walls as the town grew, and by the third century it covered about 144 acres, among the largest Roman towns in Britain. Urban life declined from the mid-fourth century and effectively ceased around AD 450 after the Roman withdrawal, but the site was later revived as an Anglo-Saxon center and became the usual court of the kings of Wessex and later of other Saxon, Danish, and Norman kings of England.