Excavations
Much of the fort remains buried underneath the Norman Castle Keep. Very few excavations have taken place and there is very little to see due to the castle and surrounding city centre buildings being built over the layout of the fort. However, the praetorium, principia and two granaries of the fort are known to be in grounds of the castle adjacent to the castle keep. The remains of the original milecastle and a full-sized reconstruction lies behind the Newcastle Arts Centre, just off the A186 Westgate Road. Hadrian's Wall, although no longer visible, can be traced passing north of the Roman Catholic cathedral in the city centre and roughly followed the line of the modern A187 eastwards, and is buried beneath the A6115 to the west.
Finds from excavations around the castle keep and dredging of the Tyne yielded usual finds from Roman encampments such as pottery shards, engravings, 7 altar stones, around 11 building inscriptions (one recording possible restoration of a bath-house outside the fort) and even a recently unearthed stone dedicated to empress Julia Domna dated 213AD. Some of these inscriptions were on display at the Museum of Antiquities in the grounds of Newcastle University. This museum has now closed and its collection has been moved to the recently re-opened Great North Museum: Hancock (formerly known as the Hancock Museum).
From altar-stones and inscriptions we can gather that gods worshipped included Jupiter (two altar-stones), mother goddesses, of which one relief shows three seated female figures, and Silvanus. Water related gods such as Neptune and Oceanus have also been recovered, no doubt worshipped due to the fort's close proximity to the river.
The bridge itself was discovered in 1872 lying beneath the swing-bridge which was built in the same year. It had two stone abutments and so far only two piers have been located, but ten are estimated to have existed. The total length of the Roman bridge from bank to bank is estimated to have been 234 metres (735 ft).
Recovered inscriptions may once have adorned the Roman bridge. Two large altars are thought to have stood to either side of the road on the central pier of the bridge, while a monumental inscription is thought to have been erected on a small archway, also on the central pier, under which all traffic on the bridge had to pass. These two altar-stones were dredged up from the mud of the Tyne and are in remarkably good condition, which has led some scholars to believe that they may have been ceremoniously dropped into the water from the bridge during some sort of dedication ceremony.
Read more about this topic: Pons Aelius