Spanish Holiday - Tarragona

Friday morning, Tanya put me on the local bus to Tarragona so she could finish bailing out the Spanish economy and start packing. Tarragona is a port city of about 160,000, about 30 minutes NE of Salou by local bus.  Main industries are chemicals (BASF, Dow, etc) and tourism.   It may have been settled as long ago as 2400 years but became a winter camp for the Roman legions about 2200 years ago. Roman ruins are abundant as are medieval buildings still in use.

After getting a small tourist map I headed for the dead centre of town.  The Necropolis is a combination of Roman burials, followed by early Christian burials of the 2nd and 3rd centuries.  The early Christians adopted Roman burial rites and added Christian symbols.  Many of these burial rites are recognizable today.  About 1250 graves have been identified, often in two or more layers.

Roman sarcophagus

Paleo-Christian symbols

Much of the area has been filled in with sand to prevent continued weather degradation

Explanation of the Necropolis

As you can see from the picture on the left, people were often buried in Amphorae.  The question is how do you get the bodies into them? Dean Martin, you could just pour in.  With an enema and lipo-suction, I could be buried in an empty wine bottle but...

From here I walked clear across town to the Amphitheater.  It had a checkered past.   Romans used it for various gladiatorial games and public executions including the burning of three Christian martyrs in 259 AD.  Seating capacity was 12500 people. The Visigoths drove the Romans out in the 5th century and in the 6th century built a basilica at the one end where the martyrs had been executed.  The Moors took over from the Visigoths in the 8th century and basilicas were no longer in vogue. Another church was built on the site in the 12th century. In the 16th century it was a convent.  In the 18th and 19th centuries, a prison was build on the site.  It was abandoned and torn down to reconstruct the original so much as possible.

Scale model

Remains of basilica at one end of the amphitheater

the other end of the amphitheater 

 

The main entrance

Remains of the Via Augustus Roman road 

Roman Interstate 5 meters wide

 I so wanted to tell someone that the Romans abandoned the amphitheater because it was simply a poor investment - the lions ate all the prophets (the joke only works orally).  However...

Next was the archaeological museum.  Everything was well labelled in Catalan, Spanish and French, the three main languages of the area. Just outside the museum were the ruins of the residence of the Roman Praetor, governor of that part of Spain.

Praetorian residence 

Praetorian residence

Christian tombstone

Roman architecture

Large storage vessels

Amphorae for wine or oil

Roman floor mosaic of all fish found in the sea around Tarragona

In 1811 Napoleon invaded Spain (The Peninsular War).  Tarragona was besieged for several months and when it fell to the French troops, it was not pretty.  

Remembering the French siege of Tarragona in 1811

There was so much more to see but I ran out of time and energy.