Roman Mérida: theatre, amphitheatre and circus: a self-guided walk
By Alleytale
Spectacle in Emerita Augusta
Emerita Augusta was founded in 25 BC for discharged soldiers and it soon built a theatre, an amphitheatre and a circus. The walk visits all three, along with the bullring that came later on the same hill, then turns toward Roman water and the city's best-known aqueduct.
The stops
Start at a Roman house on the south-west edge of Emerita Augusta, outside the old city wall. It was built at the end of the 1st century or the start of the 2nd and abandoned at the end of the 4th, and it takes its name from a Mithraic shrine on the nearby Cerro de San Albín. The plan is built around two peristyles, courtyards ringed with columns, and one room keeps the floor known as the cosmogonic mosaic.
Photo: Brane Blokar — CC BY-SA 4.0 Mérida's bullring opened on 5 July 1914 on top of Cerro de San Albín, the highest ground in the city on its southern side. When the ground was levelled for it, builders turned up a hoard of Roman sculptures, probably linked to a Mithraic temple, which José Ramón Mélida recovered for the city's archaeological museum. In January 1939 the ring was also made part of a Francoist concentration camp for Republican prisoners, which closed that October.
Photo: Zarateman — CC0 Rafael Moneo designed this museum, built between 1980 and 1986, with the aim of giving it the character and presence of a Roman building. Its interior is a run of arches lit from the centre. Among what it keeps are the originals of the sculptures of Ceres, Pluto and Proserpina that stand between the columns of the Roman theatre's stage front.
Photo: Anual — CC BY-SA 4.0 Emerita Augusta was founded in 25 BC for discharged soldiers, and its amphitheatre was inaugurated in 8 BC. Gladiators fought here, and so did beasts, against each other and against men. The oval measures 126 by 102 metres, held about 15,000 spectators, and had a pit under the arena floor where animals were kept before they were let out.
Photo: Benjamín Núñez González — CC BY-SA 4.0 Built in 16 to 15 BCE at the urging of the consul Agrippa, the theatre held about 6,000 people, and the grand stage front dates from around the end of the 1st century. Its top rows stayed above ground for centuries as the Seven Chairs, where local folklore said Moorish kings once decided the city's fate, and bullfights were held among them from at least 1777. Since 1933 it has hosted the International Festival of Classical Theatre, the oldest of its kind in Spain.
Photo: Fernando — CC BY-SA 4.0 Chariots raced here. The circus was modelled on the Circus Maximus in Rome, is more than 400 metres long and could hold up to 30,000 spectators, and it stood far outside the city walls, close to the road that led to Toledo and Córdoba. Much of it survives, including the main entrance, the central wall and the judges' tribune, and once Christianity took hold it saw more use than the theatre and amphitheatre, because racing was thought less sinful than the shows staged there.
Photo: Carole Raddato from Frankfurt, Germany — CC BY-SA 2.0 This is one of the conduits that brought water to Emerita Augusta. It was almost 1,000 metres long, dates to the first century and carried water across the dip of the Albarregas river, and today only three pillars and the arches between them remain. It was declared a national monument in 1912.
Photo: Ángel M. Felicísimo from Mérida, España — CC BY-SA 2.0 Researchers regard this as the first Christian temple built in Hispania after Emperor Constantine's peace, raised in the 4th century over the tomb of Eulalia, a young martyr of Mérida. The church you see dates to the 13th century and is the only fully medieval building in the city. In the atrium, the little Hornito chapel is said to stand where she was martyred, though it is really a votive chapel for pilgrims, built with stones from a Roman temple of Mars.
Photo: Juanje 2712 — CC BY-SA 3.0 es The aqueduct brought water into Emerita Augusta from the Proserpina reservoir, about 5 kilometres to the north-west. Thirty-eight arched pillars still stand, up to 25 metres high, along some 830 metres, built of granite blocks and red brick. Later inhabitants named it the Aqueduct of the Miracles for the awe it inspired.
Photo: Rodrigoloso — CC BY-SA 3.0 es
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