Merida

Roman aqueduct

On November 12, we arrived in Merida, Spain by train around 8 pm and took a taxi to our hotel.  On our previous trip to Spain, we had read about Merida, but not gotten there, so we were pleased to make it this time.  Our most important stop on our first night was to go around the corner from our hotel to the Calle John Lennon, where we found a pizza parlor for dinner.  It turns out that most of the streets in Merida are named after famous people, from Roman times to the present.  Otherwise, we found that Calle John Lennon was pretty much just a normal street.  This is a good place to add that we always felt comfortable walking around at night in all the places in Europe we have been.

The main attractions of Avila had been medieval; the main attractions of Merida are Roman.  It was created in 25 BC as Colonia Emerita Augusta for veterans of two of Rome’s legions, and as the capital of one of the three provinces of Roman Hispania.  The similarities with Nimes are obvious, and it was fascinating to compare their remains.

Roman bridge viewed from Alcazaba

Just a few blocks from our hotel was the Roman bridge across the Guadiana river.  This is still in use as a pedestrian bridge.  Its Roman origins are obvious, but it has also been kept up and restored many times.  There are two different aqueduct remains, but one of them turned out to be 17^th century, although it followed much of the route of a Roman aqueduct, of which only three arches remain.  The water in both systems is carried from reservoirs that the Romans created with dams, and these are still used for water and flood control.

17th century aqueduct

Merida also has an Amphitheater, but it is much more ruined than the one in Nimes.  I am glad that we saw both, because otherwise the Merida one would have been harder to visualize completely.  On the other hand, Merida has a very impressive and well preserved Theater.  The innovation that the Romans made to the Greek theater was to add a “scaenae frons” as the magnificent and dramatic backdrop to the stage.  With two floors of columns and statues, it is a very imposing building, built to impress the masses with Roman pomp and ceremony.  I learned that the Amphitheater is two theaters put together to create the central action area – I had never thought of it that way.

Roman Theater

Merida now has a summer spectacular of classical theater on this stage, so this is a building which has been restored enough to continue using, just like the Amphitheater in Nimes.

Another classic Roman edifice that Merida has is a circus – the place where chariot races were held.  There is not a lot to see there; the stands are mostly not clearly delineated, and I could not tell how high up they went.  But the race track itself, and the central “spine” are still quite obvious, and the little exhibition room did a good job of describing the importance of this sport to the Romans, just like car racing for the modern world.

Circus

There are the remains of two forums in the center of Merida.  In the main one there is a Temple which is a great illustration of the fate of many ancient monuments.  After the Visigoths conquered the Romans, they built a church in the area and destroyed many pagan images, and then the Moors built a mosque, which the Christians tore down when they returned.  In the 17^th century the local Count thought that the Roman pillars would make a good façade for his house, so he built his palacio within the temple.

Forum Temple

In the 1970s when the city was renovating everything, they decided to leave part of the house while restoring the forum.  The temple is also interestingly different because it has 2 rows of columns around it; one free standing and one with half pillars built into the walls of the temple.

Ducal Palace

Merida seems to be one of those European towns that keeps finding ruins every time someone starts to build something, including the Museum of Roman Art.  So there and at a government building site, they put the building up on piers so that the ruins could be left for excavation as time and money allowed.  They also have a very interesting Roman villa, called Mithreo’s House, which is well excavated and roofed over to protect the remains.

House of Mithreo

You can walk around the perimeter and they have good displays describing the rooms.  There are many frescoes and mosaics still in place, and it is a very interesting archeological site.  The Roman Art Museum was really excellent for its size.  The building has a large 3 story atrium in its center which fits the monumental scope and thrust of the Roman world.  The basement, as I said, is old walls and water channels still mostly waiting to be studied.  The main hall and 3 open floors along one side of it have many statues, frescoes and mosaics, as well as smaller articles.  We enjoyed learning about Mithreo, for instance, who is the god of infinite time, borrowed from the Persian’s Mithra, and who seems to have had a cult following in the city.

Museum of Roman Art

There was not much information about the Visigoths who succeeded the Romans, but there was a small museum about them with rather random stone carvings.  They were Christian barbarians by the time they took over from the Romans.  Merida is the first place we’ve been to with any Moorish remains.  There is a large citadel, the Alcazaba, still standing that was very near our hotel.  It dominated the entrance to the city over the Roman Bridge, incorporating all that is left of the ancient walls.  There is an interesting tower there which also had an underground passage that lead out to the walls and an old roman dike which the Moors modified into a cistern for the fort’s water supply.

God of Infinite Time

There was an excavation area which turned out to be down at a Roman level, and we were amazed to explore back around a building (that we hoped had toilets) and to instead discover stacks of mosaics.

Even the Basilica of Saint Eulalia, a fourth century martyr, is interesting mostly for the variety of remains from many eras found in its crypt.

Colonia Emerita Augusta

We also found the modern day city of Merida to be a pleasant town to wonder around in.  We happened to be there during a general strike called throughout Europe on November 14 to protest austerity measures.  Mostly the town was very quiet that day, and we did our part in trying not to engage in economic activities.  There was a march through town in the early evening, and I think maybe one in the morning in support of education, but as befits a small town, it was all quite low key.  As foreign visitors, we just tried to stay out of the way. 

Miscellaneous mosaics

Merida is also of note because we found our first vegetarian restaurant for weeks.  It is even harder to be vegetarian in Spain than in France.  The Shangri-La has been in business for about 2 years, the owner told us, and she feels like she has opened people’s minds about food choices and lifestyles.

We had 3 packed days in Merida and then left by train on the morning of November 16 on another slow “medium distance” train heading south though small towns on the plains and over some hills to Seville about noon, where we transferred to a local medium distance bus which took us 3 hours down to the coastal town of Sanlucar de Barrameda on the mouth of the Guadalquivir River.  We feel like we have really reached the far corner of this continent.  We hope to settle down for an extended stay here.