Learn About Ancient Roman Culture in Tarragona Spain

I have learned a fair amount about the Roman Empire and culture in the past six months, but have never set foot in Italy! Travelling through Spain, we came across many museums and archaeological sites that have Roman ruins and artifacts: Barcelona, Zaragoza, Empuries, and Tarragona. Some of the best or most complete that we saw were in Tarragona. It is a great little city just one hour by train south of Barcelona. There is a great beach and sea port as well as plenty of other things to see and do.

One thing about Tarragona that is very interesting is the abundance of well preserved and documented Roman ruins. We visited most of the major sites there:

• Amphitheater
• Circus and Praetorium
• Forum
• City walls
• Aqueduct
• National Archaeological Museum

Many of the sites use a free audio guide called infoMuseum. With a smart phone, you can be connected to a free wifi connection that will stream the audio to your phone and step you through the various points of interest at that particular location.

Amphitheater

The amphitheater is located overlooking the sea. It is quite picturesque. Leading down to the amphitheater is a free park with various displays of plants, flowers and artifacts. You do have to pay a small fee to get in the amphitheater itself, less than $5 USD. A better option is to get a pass that gives you access to the amphitheater, circus, forum and city walls. That will set you back less than $10 USD.

It still fascinates me to be walking on stones and observing things that were built 2000 years previously. I grew up in the Vancouver, BC Canada area and really old stuff might have been built 150 years ago. It still boggles my mind to be seeing structures that were created thousands of years ago.

Another really cool thing is seeing the evolution of settlement of the area from Roman, to Visigoth to Medieval eras. Here at the amphitheater, the medieval Santa Maria del Miracle church was built on the ruins of the Visigoth basilica built in the 6^th century, which was built on the ruins of the Roman amphitheater built in the 2^nd century. You can see the ruins all together, built one upon each other.

Circus and Praetorium

I have learned what circus, coliseum, forum and amphitheater mean in the Roman vernacular. When you hear circus, don’t think of Ringling Brothers. The primary purpose of circuses was for chariot and horse racing. A pretorium is a word used for military headquarters. It can be the place where officers resided, it may also have halls or rooms where the officers did their military planning. In the case of Tarragona, this also had a couple of towers that were reinforced and re-purposed during subsequent eras. It was a palace for the king of Aragon during the middle ages and was even used as a prison.

The circus and Praetorium in Tarragona are linked by a series of tunnels. It was quite interesting to explore these tunnels. Over the centuries, the area deteriorated and the tunnels were abandoned. Someone got the bright idea that the tunnels would be a great place to dump garbage. Archaeologists have been able to find out quite a bit about life at that time by examining the ancient trash.

Forum

In Roman times, every city had a forum. This was the place where daily life came together: politically, religiously, commercially, etc. It was typically an open square with shops, government offices, courts, temples and other places of religious worship.

When we visited, there was active archaeological work being done on the site. Also, there was a school group making a tour of the site. The school children had togas on and the instructors wore more elaborate Roman period costumes. We saw this type of “living history” learning at a couple of sites in Spain. It again reminded me of how much longer the period of history is in other parts of the world compared to the USA and Canada. I have participated in tours of places with people dressed as people of the era but my experiences have only gone as far back as the 1600s in Colonial Williamsburg, or the 1700s in St Augustine, FL or the 1800s in various fur trading forts in Western Canada. Here in Tarragona, they were dressed as they were in 200 AD.

City Walls

We saw the remains of many Roman city walls in our travels through Spain, but perhaps the most extensive and most informative were the walls in Tarragona. The official website claims that the walls are the oldest preserved Roman structure outside of Italy.

Like many of the buildings, castles, city walls, fortresses, etc. that we saw in Spain, you could see the evolution and repurposing of the structures through time. In some places, the walls were intact pretty much as they were in Roman times. In other places, they had been added on to, fortified, or modified – for example an opening or door covered up completely, or the shape of the door modified to make it smaller or larger.

Aqueduct

About 4 km (2.5 miles) from the center of Tarragona is the Ferreres Bridge aqueduct. It is also known as the Puente del Diablo (Devils Bridge). It was a quick ride for us on the #5 city bus.

This was probably my favorite sight in Tarragona. I think it appealed to me because I had seen many other Roman ruins throughout Spain, but this was my first aqueduct. Not only could you get right up close to the aqueduct on all sides, but you could actually walk across it! This portion of the aqueduct is 217 meters long, 27 meters high and 2 meters wide. (712 feet long, 89 feet high, 7 feet wide).

We decided to walk back to town rather than take the city bus. There is a network of hiking trails in the area. Our path took us along the river most of the way back to the seaport. It was quite enjoyable.

National Archeological Museum

Although the museum isn’t actually an ancient Roman ruin or site, it does house many of the most spectacular and fragile pieces found in the area. While you visit the other sites many times you will see a sign or be told on the audio guide that, “a statue of so and so was found at this site and is now housed in the National Archeological Museum.” So the museum is definitely worth a visit. I recommend visiting toward the end of your time in Tarragona as it helped to pull together all the various sites we had seen earlier in our visit.

Besides the abundant Roman history in Tarragona, there is a lot of other things to see and do. We ran out of time during our short visit to see everything. So far in our travels, Tarragona is tough to beat for a rich variety of Roman culture, ruins and artifacts all in one place.