Roman amphitheater in Cartagena . Present Cartagena , Spain , is located on the mount of La Concepción , and at present, it is only very partially excavated, because on the Roman building the current bullring was built and cemented in the 19th century .
Summary
[ hide ]
- 1 Construction of the amphitheater
- 2 History of the deposit
- 3 Archaeological excavations
- 4 Source
Amphitheater construction
It seems that on a primitive amphitheater of the Roman Republic , at the time of the Flavian dynasty , the current one was built.
Andesite , which is a volcanic stone from local quarries, and tabaires, which is a sandstone from the Canteras Cartagena district, were used in its construction .
Part of the amphitheater was built on the rock taking advantage of the unevenness of the Cerro de la Concepción, another part of the building was built on vaults and buttresses. It had an elliptical shape and it is calculated that it would have a capacity for 10,000 – 11,000 spectators.
History of the deposit
Unlike the Roman Theater in Cartagena, whose existence was completely ignored until the 20th century , the ruins of the amphitheater were always visible in the city. In the Modern Age , the area in which it was found was renamed Antiguans , due to the large number of ancient remains that appeared when it was excavated.
At the foot of the castle, on the Levante side , there are huge fragments of buildings where La Chancillería or Convento Lurídico de Cartagena used to be , in a famous Colosseum, not less than the Roman one. From here the neighbors, without order, have removed beautiful stones, antique figures and columns.
In 1854 the current Plaza de Toros de Cartagena was built on the stands of the amphitheater , which took advantage of the structure of the Roman building to support its foundations on it.
Archaeological excavations
As the bullring is smaller than the amphitheater, part of its structures may have been very partially the subject of archaeological excavation. The central arena has been excavated, some of the high-rise walls, some buttresses and “vomitoria”, vaulted entrances, one of which is restored.
Currently, the site is awaiting a major excavation and restoration project that will respect both structures: Plaza de Toros and Amphitheater, and will also incorporate a new annex building, while using part of the plaza de bulls to allocate it to exhibition rooms of the new Regional Museum of Contemporary Art “MUCAM”.
