Tuesday, October 6th - Tarragona, Spain

Today was a day almost totally in Tarragona.  I caught the 10 a.m. bus from Salou and didn't come back until after 8 p.m.   Aside from a lunch break and a few moments of relaxation on park benches as I checked maps, I was on the go the whole time.

Tarragona is about 30 minutes north of Salou and 30 minutes south of Barcelona.  It is a much larger city than the other smaller towns along the coast and has a population of 135,000.  It is also a very active port city while the other towns are mainly tourist hangouts.  There are records of Tarragona going back as far as the 5th century BC.  To the Romans, who used it as a major base for many centuries, the name of the town was Tarraco.  It was known around the Roman Empire for its fertile agricultural land, its sea shore, port, roads, minted coins and  its good wine and flax.  As a Roman city it had a fortification wall, towers, forum, amphitheatre, aqueducts, etc. and many of these are partially or totally intact today.

The bus dropped us at the main bus station in Placa Imperial Tarragona, the main traffic circle in the city with eight streets going off of it.  One of those streets is the Rambla Nova, which runs down to the edge of the water.  This route was once the Via Augusta, one of the main roads in the Roman Empire.  It is a huge and beautiful street with wide sidewalks on either side of the street and a wide tree-lined pedestrian area in the median.  Despite being a very busy street it was very relaxing walking down the centre park-like area.

About a block down the street I came to a wonderful monument.  The Monument als Castells is a statue of a human pyramid and it is perfect.  I could actually take pictures of it and there were no movements to blur my pictures.  It was eight levels high and looked fantastic.  And the setting of course was terrific.

A bit further down the street I ran into the street market.  While it certainly blocked the beautiful view of the tree-lined street, it did add some atmosphere to the area with the colours and shouts from the vendors.  I wandered through a couple of blocks of it and decided that was enough for me, but you could have found some great bargains on just about anything you might have wanted.  It was very busy and very crowded because there wasn't a lot of room between the booths for people to get through.

I had my map already with me and I knew the Central lMarket was just a couple blocks to the right so I headed in that direction.  The market building itself is from 1915 and is large with a curved raised ceiling in the centre.  The exterior of the building was decorated with huge colourful festival characters and they certainly livened up the brick.  Inside they were selling fish, meat, fruit, vegetables, baked goods, etc. and it was quite busy.

I crossed back over the Ramblas Nova to head to the old town.  There was a beautiful big building with light stones that looked white in the sunlight and then red bricks around the doors, windows and at the corners and as pillars and they were a beautiful contrast to the stone.  It turned out to be church and the main door was high and arched with an intricate stained-glass window above it and then the tower and spires above that with some parts looking Gothic.

On the corner at one point I think I saw the Chamber of Commerce building.  The sign on the building mentioned commerce, industry and navigation in Tarragona so I'm pretty sure it was the chamber.  It was lovely with a tower and turret and spire at the main corner of the building.  It had fancy arched windows and brick work and looked very lovely.

Eventually the wall beside the side walk turned into an actually section of the Roman city wall 30-40 feet high.  The wall was made of stones of various sizes and shapes - obviously very old but still very impressive looking.  There was also a tower in the area but it was from the midieval period and just built against the Roman wall.  That actually surprised me since the construction looked basically the same on both of them.  The gate through the wall (Portal del Roser) was bricked at the edges and over the passage way.  The entrance was probably ten feet wide and twelve feet high with another twenty feet or so of stone above it.  A car can now drive through but I assume it was at one point wide enough for a chariot and horses.   The walls, both Roman and Midieval, continued at this point and you could have gone up to walk around the top of them for a while but I wasn't sure I'd have enough time so I skipped that part.

Before entering the old town, the sidewalks had wonderful designs in them simply made with stones.   The different colours and shapes made designs that were quite amazing and beautiful.   There was a roman column which was made up of many large sections.  They looked a little out of line but were still very secure.  

Inside the wall are more walls and arched entrances and towers and homes of the Roman period.  The one right inside is a museum that I might have visited but it was undergoing renovations and you could not go in.  

The streets inside the old city were narrow but they seemed to be more on a grid system than other earlier cities I've visited.  Some had nice patterns in the stone of the street.  The buildings were all old brick and most had small balconies.  There were also some connecting walkways between buildings and over streets, and lots of high, wide arched entrances into the buildings.  Some buildings were very plain looking and others had very ornate paintings and carvings.  The brick was sometimes very light in colour, sometimes tan colour and sometimes reddish.

The streets were pretty deserted and basically just residential so not much to see until just after the tourist information office.  It was just before the cathedral and, in fact, the cathedral had dominated the view to the end of the street as I walked down it.  The cathedral is up a series of stairs so it appears bigger than it actually is.  In front of it and to the side there are squares  where some shops were open but basically it was the restaurants and cafes who were set up and ready for business.  

I went into the cathedral and that tour included the church building, the cloister and the museum.  It came with an audio guide that started outside looking at the facade and then walked you through everything in the place.  It was well done but by the end you really weren't caring who designed or built or carved or painted anything.  I listened to everything and I it was almost two hours in length.    From a distance the outside of the church is pretty plain and white looking with a just huge arched door and a rose window as decoration.  As you get closer you realize there are lots of carvings in the light stone of the front.  There is of course a story for everyone of them but I no longer remember any of that part.  

The church was started in the 12th century and consecrated in 1331.  It is built on the highest part of the city and on top of old Roman and Visigoth church ruins.  The church is long and narrow (104 m x 16 m) with huge pillars that are actually clusters of smaller pillars rising 26 m high in the main part and 32 m at the highest.  Only the gold altar pieces and the dark wood of the pews and choir stalls and the light from the stained-glass windows add colour to the white interior.  Oh, the marble stone floor pattern also adds some colour.  The central dome is beautiful with a lot of vibrant blue around the edges, lots of gold , eight clear windows and the top part with paintings and more gold.

There are side chapels all around both sides and they are from various centuries and vary greatly in design.  Some are quite plain and other are very ornate.  One of my favourites was the Chapel of St. Thecla which was Baroque in style and an overall pink and white in colour.  Another was the Chapel of the Holy Sacrament that was a white arched room with a huge marble altar piece with carvings and paintings all over it that filled the whole front of the room.  It was very classy looking.  It also had an exquisite ceiling decoration like a dome with eight beautiful paintings in the centre panels, lots of light coming in the windows right below them and marble and gold decoration all around.  There is a lot of gold in the various church chapels and some silver as well as lots of carvings and paintings - some bright and some more muted.  There are some beautiful stained-glass windows in the church and some clear windows.  The organ is impressive with 20 x 9 m of carved dark oak and cypress carvings all around the silver pipes.

The cloister walkways had arched ceilings all around the square and arched windows looking into the garden.  The garden was really nice, except for the fact that something had killed all the goldfish in the one pond so there were a lot of bellies floating around. The museum again had a lot of gold and silver in it and some valuable jewels and stones, and I never understand why they need all of this stuff.  Overall the tour was great but I spent way too long in the cathedral when my goal was to visit the Roman sights in Tarragona.

I wandered down the street in front of the church to get to where the tourist folks said I should have lunch.  On the way I passed the old Roman market place with it's high stone archway.  I tried one place but they had already shut off their food service so I knew I was going to be in trouble.  I came to another section of Roman wall and decided to try again, this time with more success, so I had my lunch outside in the plaza looking at the remains of a Roman wall.  After lunch I went to see the remains of some Gothic arches from the Jewish Quarter. 

That led me finally to the 1st century Roman Tower (Pretoria) which was also a 14th century royal residence.  You had to go up steps and above ruins to get to the ticket office and then they send you on your way.   Had they told me there were about eight flights of stairs I might have asked if there was an elevator, which there was, but I didn't so instead I climbed the stairs and stopped at every possible information board or piece of history to read about it - just so I could have a break.  The walk was worth it though.  The view from the top was fantastic.  You could see the city - old and new - and you had a view of the Roman circus and the amphitheatre and the Mediterranean Sea.  You could also see two forts from different eras almost side by side on the same point of land.  The cathedral, on the highest point in the city, looked much larger than I expected.  In the tower there were various chambers, some that led to the Circus stands, some to the gates and some that were remodelled to become the royal rooms centuries later.  There is little in the tower now so basically all you see is empty rooms with brick walls of different bricks.

Once back down at the bottom again - walking, not taking the elevator - I went to the second part of the tour, which involved the bottom chamber of the tower.  A lot of these chambers are quite large and it is assumed that these were the administrative offices of the Romans.  There were tombstones and other exhibits in this area.  Then you moved through some of the covered corridors of Roman times.  Sometimes there were holes in the top of the curved stone tunnel so you had to assume it had collapsed..  I guess you then just had to hope it wasn't going to collapse more.  Eventually you came out at the circus, where the Romans held their chariot races, and some of the arched structures that held the horses, chariots and riders between races, and the seats for the spectators.  There is not much of the track left, just a portion of the one end so you need a vivid imagination to actual figure it out.   Once there were 56 arcades around the circus but only 3 remain today.  The circus was 325 m long and 115 m wide and held 25,000 spectators so it was certainly big in its day.

My next stop was the 2nd century Roman Amphitheatre, which was just below the circus and right on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea.  I had to wander through a lovely park with terraced gardens to get down to the level and at one point they have an elevator so people can just get up and down the hillside - very civilized and yes, I took it.  Well over half of the amphitheatre remains so it is much easier to recognize than the circus was. And with the Mediterranean in the background it is a beautiful complex.  I wandered around the complex.  You start up at the top and can then walk down on to the floor of the theatre or into the stands.  It is such a beautiful setting it is hard to imagine gladiators fighting to the death or executions taking place in it.  Because three Christian priests were executed here in the 3rd century, the Christians decided to build a basilica in memory of the martyrs on the sight around the 6th century.  They used some of the stones from the amphitheatre to build the church.  In the 12th century another church was built in the same spot using the surrounding stones.  In the 18th century it was used as a prison but was abandoned in the 20th century.  At that point the whole complex went to the city to be preserved.   What you see now is the circular amphitheatre and most of the stone seats around it.  Unfortunately, the theatre floor is in the centre but it has the ruins of two churches cutting through it.

I then walked back up the hill to the start of the Rambla Nova and walked up it from the Mediterranean side.  It really is a nice street.  I had an ice cream cone on the way and went past the public market again on the way to the next ruins.  I arrived just ten minutes before closing according to the attendant, although my sheet said it was forty minutes before, so he tried to talk me out of going in but I paid him and went in anyway.  I hurried through the place so I wouldn't keep him late but when I started back to the beginning I discovered  that two other groups had come in later so I need not have rushed.  These ruins are of some Roman homes and shops along a Roman street that was near the temple and basilica.  The temple is believed to have been dedicated to Jupiter, Juno and Minerva.  The basilica was not a church but rather an administrative area where council could meet and where hearings could be held to resolve disputes.  Hence it was a type of forum and that's why the area is called the Roman Colonial Forum.  There are some low walls remaining in the area of the homes and the shops.  There are walls with arches in them, pillars and even pillars joined by structures at the top in the area of the temple and basilica but I couldn't actual picture any of it while I was there on my rushed visit.

From there I walked back to teh bus station and caught the next bus to Salou.  I got back to the apartment, had some dinner, did some computer work and went to bed.

There were lots of other sights to see in Tarragona and many of them were Roman.  The aqueduct would have been fantastic as it is two levels of arches with 11 on the bottom and 25 on top with a total height of 27 m and a length of 249 m.  That certainly sounds a lot more spectacular than the aqueduct we walked to in Pineda de Mar.  There were also museums yet to see and other parks and buildings, but no time.  I guess that will be the next trip.

And for one last tidbit, even in Roman day around the turn of the millennium the streets in Tarraco (now Tarragona) were 20 feet or 6 metres wide.  That could explain the fact that the streets in the old town were not as narrow as in other locations.  They were used to wider roads and streets.