Ruins at Tarraco

The thing with ancient cities is that these place tend to be inhabited for long periods of time. Tarraco was the capital of the Spanish province of the Roman empire and was thus the center of activity of the province. Unsurprisingly, Tarraco was inhabited since its establishment and much has changed over the centuries. With the fall of the Roman empire, the structures of Tarraco were torn down to be used for other purposes such as constructing newer buildings. This was what happened to most of the Roman structures of Tarraco. You would be lucky to see intact structures for centuries after its active use. Examples of these are the Roman amphitheater of Tarraco and the Circo Romana.

For this reason, it is a very exciting to just walk around the ancient city. Once in a while you would encounter some ancient ruins which have been preserved. However, most of them won’t be recognizable as these are mostly parts of structures which were here before. You would most likely have to rely on the educated guesses of archeologists. We encountered one of these partial ruins while randomly walking in Tarraco. I couldn’t tell what they were originally but it seems that it was part of the Circo Romano I was quite surprised since the Circo Romano was supposed to be some distance away. Then again, it should not be that surprising since the Circo Romano was supposed to be huge. Only a small part of the Circo Romano was recovered plus some parts here and there.

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