Zaragoza: Roman Caesaraugusta under the Pilar: a self-guided walk
By Alleytale
Roman Caesaraugusta under the Pilar
Zaragoza began in 14 BC as the Roman colony of Caesaraugusta, and its port, forum, baths, theatre and wall are still here, set among the cathedrals and squares of the city that grew on top of them.
The stops
Look for the four bronze lions at the ends of this bridge, which is why it is also called the Bridge of Lions. They were added in 1991, the work of Francisco Rallo Lahoz. The bridge itself was built between 1401 and 1440 under Gil de Menestral, and the first bridge of Roman Caesaraugusta stood on this same spot.
Photo: Alonsolej — CC BY-SA 3.0 On Plaza de San Bruno, a museum shows what remains of Caesaraugusta's river port. It was built in the 1st century AD and abandoned in the middle of the 6th, and its buildings lay along the right bank of the Ebro, in the northeast corner of the forum, connected to it by stairs. Trade here was busy, moving goods from inland, such as grain, timber and iron, and from the coast, such as pottery, salted goods and wine.
Photo: Millars — CC BY-SA 4.0 The Forum Museum lies beneath Plaza de la Seo, on the site of the Roman forum of Caesaraugusta, and the entrance is through a prism of Iranian onyx panels. Excavations in 1988 and 1989 uncovered a market, a sewer and drinking-water pipes from the time of Augustus, and parts of the splendid city forum built under his successor Tiberius. The forum stood near the river port and was the centre of the city's social life.
Photo: GattoCeliaco — CC BY-SA 4.0 La Seo's site goes back to the Roman forum. A mosque, the city's main one, stood here, and after Alfonso I arrived in Zaragoza in 1118 the building was consecrated as San Salvador in 1121, with the Romanesque cathedral beginning in 1140. From 1204 Aragonese kings were crowned here, the last being Charles I in 1518.
Photo: jose antonio casanov… — CC BY-SA 3.0 These public baths were built in the 1st century AD and used until the 4th. Works in the area in 1982 and 1983 uncovered a large pool with columns along its sides, once lined with marble on the floor and walls and decorated with flower motifs. The museum shows column bases and statues, along with reproductions of everyday objects such as sponges, scrapers and needles.
Photo: Millars — CC BY-SA 4.0 Built in the first half of the 1st century AD, under Tiberius and Claudius, this theatre followed the model of the Theatre of Marcellus in Rome. It was 106 metres across, among the largest in Roman Hispania, and could hold about 6,000 spectators. It stayed in use until the 3rd century, when its stones were reused for the city walls and other buildings, and excavations brought it back to light in the 1970s.
Photo: Millars — CC BY-SA 4.0 This monument honours Francisco de Goya, the great painter born in Aragon, and was inaugurated on 8 October 1960. The architect José Beltrán Navarro and the sculptor Federico Marés conceived it, and Marés directed the work, with figures dressed as the 18th-century majos and majas that Goya immortalised in his tapestry cartoons. When the plaza was later remodelled, the group was set in a broad, shallow fountain, and only Goya's own statue rises above it.
Photo: Gab416 — CC BY-SA 3.0 es The Lonja was built between 1541 and 1551 as a hall for trade, after merchants had asked for one and had until then done business in La Seo and other churches. Juan de Sariñena designed it, and it is the most important fully Renaissance building in Aragon and the first to use the style, with Florentine influence and Mudéjar touches in its brick and its polychrome plaster portraits. Today it is an exhibition hall of the city council.
Photo: Luis Miguel Bugallo Sánchez (Lmbuga) — CC BY-SA 4.0 Local tradition says that on 2 January 40 AD, while Saint James was praying by the Ebro in Roman Spain, Mary appeared to him and gave him a column of jasper. The basilica is reputed to be the first church ever dedicated to her. The Baroque building seen today was built mostly between 1681 and 1872, with eleven domes and four towers, and Goya painted two of the frescoed vaults around the Holy Chapel.
Photo: Kawon Kez Sel — CC0 The wall around Caesaraugusta was built under Tiberius in the 1st century and reworked until the 3rd, and it once ran about 3,000 metres with some 120 towers. Two stretches survive, and the longer one, about 80 metres, stands here at the northwest corner of the Roman city, beside the Torreón de la Zuda. The stone facing you see dates from the 3rd century, and the tower beside it is what remains of the Muslim palace of La Zuda, built on one of the wall's towers.
Photo: Dorieo — CC BY-SA 3.0 A bronze Augustus of Prima Porta, a gift from Mussolini in 1940, stands here. Augustus gave the city its name, and the statue commemorates the site of the Puerta de Toledo, the west gate of Caesaraugusta at the end of its main east-west street. The gate, flanked by two crenellated towers, was demolished in 1842, and in 1210 King Peter II had moved the grain market beside it, the seed of the Central Market.
Photo: Ajzh2074 — CC BY-SA 4.0 The Central Market, also known as the Mercado de Lanuza, was designed in 1895 by the Aragonese architect Félix Navarro Pérez and finished by 1903, to replace the open-air market of the old market square. He had been to Paris and knew Les Halles, and he built a hall of iron and glass on three naves, with stone fronts that carry neoclassical details and sculpted allegories of agriculture, hunting, fishing and transport. It was restored in 2018 and 2019 and reopened on 5 February 2020.
Photo: FRANCIS RAHER — CC BY 2.0
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