A little museum represents this desciptively. However it gives a substantial insight of living and dying in the Roman Barcino. The necropole at the Via Sepicral is not part of Barcelona's most spectacular sights. The renovation of the square and of the graves was finished in 2010, even the little park was designed the way it was supposed to look about 2.000 years ago. During groundwork in 1956, the cemetery was discovered. After the monestary was demolished in the civil war, the area was modified into a square. When the medieval and modern city evolved, a Carmelite monestary was established on the fluviatile sediments in 1588. Funerary monuments at different places were used for the construction of the Roman city walls in the 4th century. We have to thank this natual preservation for having the Via Sepulcral as one of the best preserved Roman necropoles. In the following decades the cemetery vanished under fluvial sediments, that saved the monuments from decomposing. The cemetery on the Plaça Villa de Madrid was used from the 1st until the 3rd century. On both sides of the Roman funeral path several funerary monuments are located without a regular arrangement: altars, stelae and especially cupae - half circled grave stones, which remind of wooden barrels and which are very typical for Roman funerals. Altogether 85 graves with the remains of more than 200 people are known, howerver only one part was laid open or is preserved and open for visitaion today. Museu d'Història de la Ciutat - The museum of Barcelona's historyĮspecially people of the middle and under class (slaves and freedmen) were laid to rest in the burial ground of Via Sepulcral. At the museum of the city's history you can see that the grave stones were used to build the city walls. In Barcelona you can see the largest Roman excavations outside of Rome.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |