Traseul cicloturistic VIA AURAEA

Aparent inalterable, eternal and very rarely found in nature, considered a divine metal, associated with the sun's light, loaded with multiple and profound qualities and symbolic meanings, transformed into supreme values and attribute of the power of religious, political or military elites, tacitly assumed or decreed as the measure of all things, of the wealth and strength of communities, a matter that has set individuals and societies in motion, generating wars, complex diplomatic games, pushing toward crimes or expeditions to the ends of the Earth, but at the same time generating astonishing technological achievements in the quest to bring it to light from the depths of the crust, to process it and transform it into artistic masterpieces - for over 9000 years gold has continued to fascinate and attract humanity, becoming the true engine of history.

The history and collective imagination, ancient and modern, have placed Dacia, alongside a few other provinces, among the mythical countries of gold in the Ancient World. As shown by the testimony of Herodotus, the legend of the land traversed by the river Maris (the current Mureș), a place of extraordinary abundance of gold, was born and began to circulate in the Greek world at least since the 5th century BC.

The existence of ancient literature about the riches of Dacia at the beginning of the 2nd century BC is confirmed by the fact that Trajan himself documented on this subject before the outbreak of military operations for the conquest of Dacia: 'For being a wise man and learning from books that this country is rich and powerful in arms now, and that it was before the country that the great Trajan conquered by defeating Decebal, the king of the Getae, and brought to the Romans five million pounds of gold and twice as much of silver, aside from cups and objects that exceed the limits of any price, of herds, weapons, and over five hundred thousand very strong men with weapons.' (Criton – Getica).

The booty was so rich that Trajan decided in the year 107 to withdraw from circulation worn silver coins and to mint other new ones with a lower face value. Some historians attribute this devaluation to the flooding of the Roman market with precious metals from Dacia.

At the same time, after the conquest of Dacia, Trajan launched the most ambitious and extensive civil and military building program that the Roman Empire had known, since the conquest of Egypt during the time of Emperor Octavian Augustus, as well as reducing the tax burden on taxpayers, generous transfers of goods and money to the Roman plebeians, and supporting long-term measures for demographic growth in Italy.

The gold deposits in the current territory of Romania are numerous, but undoubtedly the most famous gold-producing area of the old Roman province of Dacia was the Gold Polygon or golden quadrilateral of the Metaliferi Mountains, delimited in the Alba County by the area from Zlatna and Roșia Montană with the adjacent areas Almașul Mare, Bucium and Baia de Arieș, areas very rich in precious metal. In fact, one of the largest nuggets discovered, later, was that of Abrud in 1536 and weighed about 5.6 kg.

As previously shown, gold is not exclusively a chemical element; it is rather the engine of a true phenomenon that has generated extensive urban, social developments, trade routes, and military presences with everything that this entails.

In this context, the cultural route that we propose does not refer only to the primary exploitation of the ore. Therefore, we propose as a starting point the exploitation area (Zlatna-Roșia Montană-Bucium), but also the roads by which the precious metal was transported to the 'ancient highway' of Roman Dacia (Mureș), the areas administering the gold extraction (Zlatna - the ancient Ampelum), the military forces involved in protecting the extraction and transportation of gold (Abrud, Zlatna, Alba Iulia) and finally the area where transports to Rome were organized (Alba Iulia).

In this last case, the presence of gold led to the construction of the only castrum of legion that functioned during the entire Roman domination in Dacia, the development of the only two cities bearing the same name, Apulum, raised to the rank of colony in Roman Dacia. In fact, Apulum becomes at the end of the 2nd century BC the richest city in Dacia, receiving in the middle of the 3rd century the epithet of Chrysopoli (the city of gold or the city of the gold).

All these arguments make Roșia Montană - the ancient Alburnus Maior and Alba Iulia - the ancient Apulum to be included on the UNESCO tentative list. These are, we believe, sufficient reasons to certify the VIA AURAEA route as a cultural tourist route that will undoubtedly have an impact on the development of local, national, and international tourism.