Catalonia & the Balearic Islands: an historical and desciptive accountCalvert, Albert Frederick
History
Catalonia & the Balearic Islands: an historical and desciptive account
Calvert, Albert Frederick
Balearic Islands (Spain) -- Description and travel; Catalonia (Spain) -- Description and travel
Within the city itself not much remains from Roman times. The sites of
the forum, the prætorium, and the great temples may be traced easily
enough, and stones hewn by Roman hands and commemorating often enough
Roman dead, are embedded in the walls of houses and churches all over
the town. The local museum contains a few of the spoils of antiquity.
There is a beautiful statue of Dionysus in Parian marble, and a great
variety of votive inscriptions. For more substantial memorials of the
Roman era we must leave the city and follow the Barcelona road some four
or five miles. Here we reach the celebrated monument known as the Tomb
of the Scipios, consisting of a rectangular base and an upper body, on
one face of which are sculptured in high relief the figures of two
warriors. The cornice is engraved with a legend in which the words
“perpetuo remane” are alone decipherable. There is no ground whatever
for supposing that the figures represent the brothers Scipio or that
this monument marks their resting-place. It is more probably the
sepulchre of some wealthy Roman settler.
The Arco de Bara is one of the best preserved monuments in Spain. The
arch itself is flanked on each side by two fluted columns of the
Corinthian order, supporting an entablature. It is simple and majestic,
like all the Roman works of the kind. An inscription records its
restoration in commemoration of the pacification of Spain during the
regency of Maria Christina and by order of Don Juan van Halen, the
Spanish general who in 1830 assisted at the defence of Brussels against
the Dutch.
The noblest handiwork bequeathed to Cataluña by the conquerors of the
world is, however, the Aqueduct, which may be compared favourably as
regards preservation and solidity with the more famous work of the same
kind at Segovia. Where it spans a valley it is composed of two series of
arches, eleven below and twenty-five above, and rising to a height of
217 metres. The stone of which it is built was Obtained from the caves
of Monte Loreto, where the quarries may still be seen.
Then there is Centcellas, on the banks of the little river Francoli,
supposed to be on the site of the villa where Hadrian lodged. Part of
the old _Thermæ_ remains--a stone chamber square without and circular
within; while another building seems to incorporate the ruins of an
early Christian structure, including a mosaic of the Ravenna type.
POBLET
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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