Tarragona

Tarragona

Tarragona is a city of about 130,000 a couple of hours driving south of Barcelona. We stayed there for two days with Liz and John who had not spent time there before but had heard it was a nice town and that the Roman ruins were worth seeing. They were.

We stayed in a hotel near the beach so could swim in the mornings in clear blue sea with very few people.

This Roman amphitheatre is 2,000 years old and was used as a quarry after the fall of the Roman Empire but a lot still remains. Hope you can read this about them. It was a competition between chariots pulled by horses and provided much entertainment for the locals. The circus in Tarragona was 450 metres long.

Romulus and Remus.

It was fascinating to go down the old passageways with rooms off the side that the Romans built. There is a lot that is unknown about what the various buildings were used for.
I liked the man who took our ticket's comment about the four of us being "a curious salad" because of Liz and John's language ability and Bob and I being from Australia.

A view of the town with parts of the old wall still intact. Everywhere people need to wash and hang out clothes.

The buildings might be old but it is still important to have access to modern equipment. I guess new wires are difficult to install internally in these buildings so the solution is to string them outside.

 We had lunch in a square with ruins of part of the old wall nearby. Most people had their photos taken beside it but Liz had to climb up it to see if she could do a traverse to an arch. She couldn't!

Nice day for a bit of passion by the port and a variation from geraniums in a window box.

 This Roman aqueduct was by far the most impressive of the Roman ruins in our opinion. It is about 4 kilometres out of town in bushland and hence probably missed out on it's stones being pillaged for other uses and is largely intact. It was built about 2000 years ago to carry water to the town of Tarragona. It is 249 metres long. The upper level has 25 arches and the lower 11. All arches are the same size. A huge engineering feat. The water was carried along the small channel on the top.

We visited the Tarragona Cathedral on the site of an earlier Roman Temple. This one was built in the mid 1300s. It has a beautiful carved wooden organ.

                                      I liked the stone floors and the very peaceful cloisters.

A good place for wedding photos.

We came across this workman chiselling away plaster and exposing old stones. Work carrying on just as it has over the centuries.
Liz was able to ask him what he was doing. He said when it was done a decision would be made as to whether to keep the old stone work exposed or plaster over it again. I like the look of the old stones but guess it may be about strength and preservation as well.