The ROMAN THEATER was built under the sponsorship of Agrippa, Augustus' son-in-law, between 16 and 15 B.C., when the Colony was promoted as the provincial capital of Lusitania. Like the adjacent Amphi... (plus +)

The ROMAN THEATER was built under the sponsorship of Agrippa, Augustus' son-in-law, between 16 and 15 B.C., when the Colony was promoted as the provincial capital of Lusitania. Like the adjacent Amphitheater, the Theater was partially built on the slope of a hill, which substantially reduced the construction costs. The rest was built with concrete covered with ashlars. Although the Romans were not very fond of theater, a prestigious city could not fail to have a building for stage games. The one in Augusta Emerita was especially generous in size: about six thousand spectators. They were distributed from bottom to top according to their social rank in three sections of seats, caveas summa, media, and ima, separated by aisles and barriers. All the seats were easily accessed from radial staircases distributed throughout the caveas. Passageways led to the access gates or vomitories. The semicircular space where the chorus, the orchestra, was located, features a marble floor resulting from a late reform. Behind the orchestra rises the proscenium wall, with circular and rectangular exedras. The stage was set up on top of it. Originally, it was a wooden platform under which all the stage machinery was distributed. Behind the scenic front wall, there is a large porticoed garden enclosed by walls with niches that were decorated with statues of members of the imperial family. In the axis of this portico, in line with the valva regia and the sacred space of the ima cavea, is the aula sacra, a small sacred space with an altar table where the figure of the divine Augustus was honored. At the western end of the Theater's portico, we can see the House-Basilica of the Theater, a dwelling whose excavator, José Ramón Mélida, believed that the rooms with apses and windows at their heads were part of a church where one of the first Christian communities gathered, hence the name House-Basilica. The entrance to the house is located to the west and opens onto a road made with diorite slabs, running from east to west. The entrance of the house leads to a series of rooms that are articulated around a courtyard that was porticoed and in the center of which the remains of a pond can still be seen. Some rooms preserve remains of mosaics decorated with geometric and vegetal motifs. Except for the floor of the apse area, which possibly had a marble pavement, the rest of the room was decorated with a mosaic featuring the presence of a crater inscribed in a square. The AMPHITHEATER was erected in 8 B.C. as evidenced by the inscriptions found in its stands and served as a stage for very popular spectacles: gladiator games, wild animal hunts, and fights between wild animals in artificial scenarios that recreated forests, jungles with lagoons, or deserts, all on the large wooden platforms that formed the arena. The approximate capacity of this gigantic arena was between fifteen and sixteen thousand spectators. Adjacent to the Theater, it is separated from it by a road that surrounds both buildings. With fewer resources, this building was erected similarly to the Theater and, like it, is the result of various phases. To reduce costs, part of the stands were seated on factory boxes filled with tightly packed earth. The walls were made of well-dressed local stone. Sometimes the layers of the walls were leveled with brick headers. In the arches of the access openings, ashlars were used, presenting the characteristic cushioning of the Augustan period. The distribution of the stands was similar to that of the Theater, although today only the cavea ima and some sectors of the media cavea are well preserved. Flanking the doors of the major axes, there are a series of rooms that were either used as cages for the animals or as rooms where the gladiators were prepared. In the arena, there is a large pit. The wooden pillars supporting the platforms were placed in it, and underneath them, all the devices necessary for the development of such complex spectacles were hidden. Outside the previous enclosure, which includes the Theater and Amphitheater, and a few meters away, is the HOUSE OF THE AMPHITHEATER, an archaeological area located outside the walls of Augusta Emerita, in an area where houses coexisted with funerary and industrial spaces. It includes two houses: the House of the Water Tower, from the 1st century B.C., and the House of the Amphitheater, which had a somewhat longer life, from the late 3rd century B.C. to the early 5th century A.D. Finally, you must visit the NATIONAL MUSEUM OF ROMAN ART, the work of the prestigious Navarrese architect Rafael Moneo Vallés, with its colossal dimensions, the repeated use of the round arch, and the use of brick and concrete, recreates the great buildings of late Roman times, such as the Baths of Diocletian in Rome or the mausoleum of Gordian in Thessaloniki. Inside, we can admire one of the best collections of Roman sculpture and mosaics on the peninsula. Through the visit to its rooms, we will understand how a great Roman city worked and how from it a vast province, the westernmost of the Roman Empire, was administered. Visiting this museum also allows us to approach the most varied aspects of the daily life of the early Emeritenses. Its crypt houses, among other vestiges, remains of extramural houses decorated with interesting paintings as well as some burials.
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