Barcelona Again

I was feeling particularly triumphant today, so I went for an early morning run past the Arc de Triunfo. And by “early morning” I mean around 10:00 because, you know, Spain.

Exploring Roman artifacts in Spain seems to have accidentally become a thread running through this trip, something I continued here in Barcelona. I took a college class in the history of Spain last year (I know you would feel awkward asking, so I’ll just come out and say I got an A; they’re not allowed to give out A+’s). As a result, I have a lot of context for this and on the recommendation of the professor visited the three original columns from the Roman temple in Barcelona, built around the 1st century, A.D.* They’ve been covered up, built around and used as decorations over the years but in the 19th century someone realized that they were actually part of Augustus’s temple and they’ve been protected ever since. And I know a lot about Augustus now, so it was pretty great to see them.

But they’re still in someone’s building, so finding them isn’t that easy. Inside this doorway there’s a tiny sign that says “Roman columns this way” with an arrow. They don’t have the most prominent stage, but at least they didn’t get dismantled and turned into planters.

And then, the Barcelona history museum, which has actual Roman streets and buildings still more or less intact from 2,000 years ago. There was a habit of building new things over old things for many hundreds of years, so if you dig down far enough, you’ll find the past, and part of the actual Roman town is on display about 15 feet below existing street level. In all seriousness, having learned a lot about Spain’s history, this opportunity to wander around Roman streets, stores, houses, etc. was pretty amazing. 

Around the fourth century, there was a little turbulence in the area (thanks, Visigoths!), so the Romans wanted to fortify the walls protecting Barcelona. They could have cut stones from existing quarries, but then someone thought “Hey, we have a lot of stone lying around here that we’re not using, let’s also use that.” So as they built the wall, they supplemented what they dragged in with stuff that was already there. Which brings us to this. If you were a rich Roman and when you died you were so popular that your family paid someone to carve a stone version of your face to put on your grave, how would you feel to know that a couple hundred years later someone would grab it to stick in a crevice in the new city wall? Cause that’s what happened and that’s where these heads were pried out of. 

*Anyone paying attention will have noticed that this is around the same century that the lighthouse in A Coruña and the aqueduct in Tarragona were built. Those Romans were pretty busy in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD.