This is an area of roughly fifteen acres. There are two berms on the exterior that you'd have to cross to get to the stone fort itself. With a height of twelve-odd feet....it'd be difficult to get over the fence. The four gates? They open to each direction and are heavily fortified.
Man-hours involved? I'd take a guess if this was 90 AD....if you had 250 workers with some construction experts managing them....it'd take around three years to put up the four fort walls and the buildings within the fort.
The stones required? This is one of those odd subjects. You'd have to have capable stone cutters who did this work and were fairly competent at this. You probably wouldn't find these type of cutters within the region....so these were Roman civilians who were brought up for the job.
From the project management prospective....it was a four-star job and required continual monitoring. Toss in the fact that attacks might occur at any time, and a supply situation required some effort....it was not an easy situation.
A year or two at such a fort? To have sat there in 96 AD and done two years of service might have been fairly boring. You can imagine some Roman troop being organized in Italy and forty young guys going through some basic training.....then marching for six to eight weeks through the Alps and southern Germany.....to reach some fort north of Frankfurt. In a heavily wooded region, then reaching a 'carved' area with few if any trees, and then finding this fort to be your home for the next couple of years ahead.....it's a bit of a shocker.
The reaction of the local Germans? There's not much to say their dislike or hatred of the Romans. Eventually, between the mini-wars and problems back in Rome....this forward basing idea came to an end.
Saalburg today is a museum of sorts. It's there to remind Germans of this period around 1,900 years ago.
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