Barcino and the Roman Foundation

June 15, 2010

I'm obviously writing this late again, but the roman part of the city is still one of my favorite places. We went on a field trip and got a tour from our teacher about the Roman foundation, which used to be called Barcino. I really like this part mostly for the architecture, but also because there is so much history. Barcelona in general is filled with history that they have preserved and are very proud of. However, they obviously cannot restore everything. For example, we were showed the area of where the Roman baths were found. They haven't excavated it though, but they still exist. There is a way to get to them but they are not allowed to be viewed by the public. It is very very interesting.

They do however have other areas which they have restored. We saw one of the the 78 towers that surrounded the city. It is impossible to completely just leave the structures alone because of weathering and a chemical in pigeon poo that wears down the stones. It was very obvious to see what were original stones because they were very large and then what parts of the tower had been fixed. In many of the areas there are pictures of what the shape of the city used to be. The city was originally discovered by retired soldiers so it has the shape of an oppidum (military camp).

The prior week we had taken a similar tour of the same area, but I didn't realize how small the city was. This time, our teacher showed us the different entrances of the city and it was very easy to see that this was not a very big community at all. There were 2 main roads running perpendicular to each other that and met right in the center of the city. We also got to see where the palace used to be (in the middle of the city). It was built at the highest point of the city and there still remains 4 columns. I believe that these were in the southwest corner of the palace, but it doesn't really matter. The man who discovered these columns wanted to preserve them so he built a building around them so that they wouldn't be destroyed. That is what is pictured on the left.