Mérida: from the forum to the Roman bridge: a self-guided walk
By Alleytale
The forum to the river, and the Roman bridge
Mérida began in 25 BC as Emerita Augusta, and later builders kept reusing its stone: Roman and Visigothic blocks in the walls of the Alcazaba, and the Count of los Corbos' palace built inside a Roman temple.
The stops
The church stands on the ruins of the Visigothic cathedral of Santa Jerusalén, where the archbishops of Emerita sat. After Alfonso IX of León retook the city in 1230, a chapel to Mary was begun on those ruins, and in 1479 the master of the Order of Santiago, Alonso de Cárdenas, ordered it enlarged into the city's main church. Since 1994 it has shared the seat of the Archdiocese of Mérida-Badajoz with Badajoz Cathedral, which is why it is called a co-cathedral.
Photo: Fernando — CC BY-SA 4.0 A Mérida physician, Lope Sánchez de Triana, founded the convent of Santa Clara in 1602, and building of its church began in 1622. The source calls the church one of the best works of austere classical Baroque in Mérida. Today it houses the city's Museum of Visigothic Art, and the church belongs to the Archaeological Ensemble of Mérida that UNESCO listed in 1993.
Photo: Manuel Ramirez Sanchez from Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, España — CC BY-SA 2.0 Poor people were first cared for here in the Hospital of Santa María de la Plaza, reformed in 1511. From the early 1600s the Hospitaller Order of St John of God ran it, and the domed church, built on an octagonal plan between 1764 and 1768, carries those dates on its façade. Since works that began in 1983 the old hospital has been the seat of the Assembly of Extremadura, and digs here in 2000 to 2002 turned up a Roman house with mosaic floors.
Photo: DEb 109 — CC BY-SA 4.0 Mérida has traditionally called this granite arch the Arch of Trajan, though nothing links it to that emperor. It stands about fifteen metres high, counting a base now buried under the paving, and the rows of holes in its stones show it was once clad in marble, which took any dating inscription with it. Finds around it led archaeologists to propose that it was the monumental entrance to a second forum, a provincial one for Lusitania, but that is still under study, and some argue the enclosure was a religious colonnaded square, not a forum at all.
Photo: Jesusccastillo — CC BY-SA 4.0 The Discalced Franciscans began this church in 1721, and a plaque on its baroque façade dates the finished church to 19 October 1737. One of the coats of arms on that façade shows the bridge over the Guadiana with the Arch of Trajan above it, the two landmarks of Mérida together. Behind the altar an octagonal chamber is covered in plaster reliefs of evangelists, archangels and Franciscan saints.
Photo: Zarateman — CC0 This portico stood in the municipal forum, the main public space of Emerita Augusta, the colony Augustus founded in 25 BC. Built in the 1st century, it is a colonnaded building with a wall of niches meant for statues found on this site, and it was restored in the 20th century. Finds from the site are on show in the National Museum of Roman Art.
Photo: Mordelfra — CC BY-SA 3.0 es Despite the name, this temple was never Diana's: excavations show it was dedicated to the cult of the emperor, and a statue of a Julio-Claudian emperor, probably Tiberius or Claudius, turned up here in the late 1800s. The Mérida historian Bernabé Moreno de Vargas gave it the name in the 17th century. In the 16th century the Count of los Corbos built his palace inside the temple's inner chamber, with a double Renaissance gallery made from Roman and Visigothic material, and the source says that in part kept the Roman building standing.
Photo: Xosema — CC BY-SA 4.0 The merchant Bartolomé Gil paid for this eclectic building in 1928 as a shopping arcade. Its style leans on the Mudéjar revival of Andalusian, especially Sevillian, regionalism, and it takes its name from the oriental motifs that decorate it. In the 1940s, the years of hunger, ration books were handed out to townspeople here.
Photo: santiago lopez-pastor — CC BY-SA 2.0 Emir Abd ar-Rahman II of Córdoba had this fortress built in 835 to hold a city that had been rebelling since 805, and it is the oldest Muslim fortification still standing on the Iberian peninsula. Its square walls, 130 metres a side, were made from granite blocks taken from Roman and Visigothic buildings. Inside is an aljibe, an underground cistern fed with water filtered from the nearby Guadiana.
Photo: YukioSanjo — CC BY-SA 4.0 The Romans built this bridge around the founding of the colony in 25 BC, and the Spanish and French sources say it decided where the city would stand. It runs about 790 metres on sixty arches and is reckoned the longest bridge to survive from antiquity. Road traffic crossed it for almost all its history until 10 December 1991, when the Lusitania Bridge opened and it became a walkway. Roman coins minted here show a gate on the bridge, which is the central motif of the city's coat of arms today.
Photo: Falk2 — CC BY-SA 4.0
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