Spain is full of Roman ruins. Some of the cities still have partially-intact city walls dating from Roman times, and Segovia of course has a full-blown aqueduct. In Sevilla, the city has built over most of the ruins. However, when they were excavating land to build the Metropol Parasol, they came across some former living spaces and even a public banquet hall. These were preserved as a museum called the Antiquarium underneath the Parasol. Even though there wasn’t an audioguide and the plaques were mostly in Spanish, we still enjoyed exploring this small indoor archeological site. The mosaics were neat, and it was interesting to see how the rooms and buildings were laid out. The Romans were definitely not into McMansions, at least not in the city center. Everything was very tightly constructed, even though these were the lodgings of wealthy Romans.
Outside of Sevilla, there are ruins that are far more extensive. Itálica was a Roman city that declined, for reasons that aren’t entirely clear. It was then plundered off and on over the centuries by private citizens before being designated as a national site. Itálica is a bit tricky to get to without a car, as you have to figure out which bus to take and where to get off. The nice thing is that it’s not crowded. Other than an adorable field trip troupe of four-year-olds and an American family, there were only a handful of people there the entire time we were there. The mosaics are amazingly well-preserved, and we even got to see some people working on one of them. I don’t know how much of what we saw was truly original and how much had been filled in by preservationists like those we saw, but it really made a difference to be able to see the patterns and borders of a complete or almost-complete mosaic. Romans had some interesting ideas about what dolphins looked like!
The best part of Itálica is saved for the end: the amphitheater. They even let you walk through it! It was surreal walking down corridors that Roman citizens walked through centuries ago. The size of the amphitheater is amazing, too.
