Durnovaria is a suggested spelling for the Latin form of the name of the Roman town of Dorchester in the modern English county of Dorset, amended from the actually observed Durnonovaria.

[7] A large late-Roman and Christian cemetery has been excavated at Poundbury just to the west of the town, but little is known of Durnovaria's decline after the departure of the Roman administration.

The Romans built an aqueduct to supply the town with water, traces remain at nearby Whitfield Farm and approaching Poundbury tunnel on the Dorchester - Yeovil railway.

Near the town centre is Maumbury Rings, an ancient British earthwork converted by the Romans for use as an amphitheatre, and to the north west is Poundbury Hill, another pre-Roman fortification.

There is little evidence to show whether or not Durnovaria survived into the post-Roman era: Gildas' record of a tradition, given in De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae iii, of twenty-eight cities and sundry castles of former happy times was not provided with any names.

Surviving northern boundaries of the administrative region, or civitas that included Dorset, reached as far as Selwood, and mark the county division between Somerset and Wiltshire to this day.