Their Names Were Lost to History. But Now, You Can See What Their Faces May Have Looked Like When They Lived in a Roman-Era City Nearly 2,000 Years Ago

A new exhibition in Budapest features 16 facial reconstructions based on skulls excavated from the ancient city of Aquincum. Curators don’t know the details of their lives, but they’ve invented backstories to fill in the gaps

Ellen Wexler | Writer and Special Projects Editor

July 23, 2026 7:00 a.m.

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He once had a name, though it was forgotten long ago. Perhaps he bore his lot in life with grace, or with clumsiness. Nobody will ever know his daily routines, his deepest friendships or his reputation among his peers.

Today, historians know only that he died between 1,600 and 1,800 years ago in the ancient Roman city of Aquincum, located in present-day Budapest. From the shape of his skull, they can make informed guesses about what he looked like. From the health of his bones, they can theorize about the hardships that he endured.

Based on these clues, experts have created a reconstruction of this man’s face, complete with deep-set eyes and thick, bushy brows. The 3D model is now on display in “Once We Were Like You,” an exhibition at the Aquincum Museum in the Hungarian capital.

To bring this ancient resident to life, curators have also invented a backstory for him. They imagine him as Respectus, an ancient construction worker. A profession of this kind could have caused the damage that researchers noticed in his bones. As for his missing tooth and broken nose? Perhaps these injuries were the result of a drunken brawl in a local tavern.

Respectus is one of 16 reconstructions on display, all based on skeletons of the city’s ancient inhabitants. Curators have used clues from their burials to puzzle out as much information as possible about their lives. To fill in the blanks, they’ve made a series of educated guesses.

“Our main goal was to bring a few of these individuals closer to the people of today,” archaeologist Lóránt Vass, co-curator of the exhibition, tells the Associated Press’ Justin Spike. “They may have had different life conditions, different social status, but people are people. I don’t think that has changed much across history.”

Aquincum began as a Celtic settlement and later became a Roman military base. By 106 C.E., it was the capital of the Roman province of Lower Pannonia. In the centuries that followed, the city’s civilian population grew to an estimated 10,000 to 15,000. Residents began leaving in the second half of the fourth century. By the fifth century, Aquincum had been largely abandoned.

The idea for the facial reconstructions came from excavations conducted between 2019 and 2021, which revealed thousands of burials, according to the state news agency MTI.

Researchers wanted 21st-century audiences to form a connection with these ancient residents and understand what their daily lives could have plausibly looked like.

The exhibition is “a kind of experiment,” combining “scientifically verifiable findings and historical imagination,” according to the museum’s website. “Things certainly did not happen this way—but they could just as easily have.”

The museum commissioned Ágnes Kustár, an anthropologist and expert on facial reconstructions, to create the first two models. Each one took about a month. As Kustár told Műemlékem.hu magazine’s Olivér Kovács in 2022, she preferred working with skulls that were more intact, allowing her to make the reconstructions as accurate as possible.

The museum then decided to expand the idea into a full exhibition. But after completing six faces, Kustár died unexpectedly in 2023; part of the exhibition is now dedicated to her memory. To finish her work, the team called in portrait artist Emese Gábor, also an expert in facial reconstructions.

Together, the two experts reconstructed a total of 16 faces. In addition to analyzing bone structure and DNA, the team looked for other clues from the burials that may shed light on ancient cultural practices.

“A mirror buried alongside the body of a teenage girl, a matron laid to rest in fine clothing or a condemned individual buried face down speaks to us from the depths of history just as much as a cut mark on a thigh bone, or genetic evidence suggesting eye color or a congenital disease,” Balázs Mende, a research fellow at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, tells MTI.

Curators have imagined some of the other individuals as a soldier, an enslaved laborer, a peasant girl, a blacksmith and a stable boy. Like Respectus, most of them had a “fairly high degree” of inflammation in their bones, Vass tells the AP. Unlike elites, they probably endured hard work and harsh conditions.

“They were subjected to regular physical labor, and in many cases, they were exposed to starvation for a certain period of time,” Vass adds. “Based on this, it can be concluded that most of them belonged to the lower middle class, which is the least-remembered segment of Roman society.”

“Once We Were Like You” is on view at the Aquincum Museum in Budapest through October 31, 2026. After closing for the winter, the exhibition will reopen in spring 2027.

Ellen Wexler | | Read More

Ellen Wexler is a staff writer and special projects editor, digital, for Smithsonian magazine.