The most popular archaeologist in Sremska Mitrovica and person who dedicated his life to research of Sirmium, Petar Milosevic, while creating the permanent exhibition of the Museum of Srem was mainly inspired by the idea to present of the remains from the Roman period of the existence of Sirmium.
The lappidarium (yard) of the Museum is the place where one enters the fascinating and old world of the stone Roman monuments. Numerous funerary monuments starting with a beautiful example of the marble funerary plate of a Roman centurion T. Cominus Severus (end of the 1st century). A great number of altars mainly found at the customs station (temple of Jupiter), road-marks, ornamented sarcophagus and the unique example of a marble sun- dial adorned with the figures of Atlas, Hercules and his half-brother Ificles.
The remains of the villae urbanae decorated with the geometrical floor mosaics are part of the Museum itself.
Our exhibition continues in the building with the brief presentation of the fossil remains of the animals which marked a long period of the first human society .These animals were extinct from our region with the start of the Paleolithic. There are placed artifacts that the people of the Neolithic, Bronze Age and the Iron Age left behind, as well as the material connected with the culture of Celts, who settled in our region around the 4th century.
The Roman period is shown through the multitude of objects, commencing with the military equipment found in the river Sava, followed by the agricultural implements, measuring instruments, amforae and vessels for food and vine preservation, terra sigillata vessels as the finest Roman ceramics. Ordinary life of the inhabitants of Sirmium is given with the typical examples of everyday ceramic and bronze vessels, bone implements, glass vessels, jewellery and coins. Moneybag with a small amount of coins from the ‘Bikić do’ hoard is exhibited. Also coins minted be emperors born in either Sirmium or the surrounding areas is shown, as well as the coins minted in the Sirmium mint.
Fragments of figural and vegetative frescoes and examples of stone sculptures (Dionysus, Minerva and one of the Dioscures) represented life of the rich class . One can see an interesting of small sculptures, terracotes and plumb icons of so-called Danubian horseman.
There is one remarkable fragment of a marble ‘mensae oltaris’ with the biblical scene of Jonas swallowed by the whale. Following is the brief look at Germanic and Avaric period remains and the fall of Sirmium into Avar hands in 582 A.D. is marked with one brick incised with a Greek inscription – a prayer for the lives of the inhabitants at the time of the three years long siege. The exhibition ends with the material of development of Slavonic culture up to 14th century.