On a small rocky plateau in central Portugal lie the remains of Conimbriga, one of the Iberian Peninsula’s premier archaeological sites. The city was abandoned in the Middle Ages and largely forgotten until the 1800s. But in Roman times, Conimbriga was an important city, boasting lavish villas and monumental architecture. A grand Roman highway—the ruts of ancient chariot wheels are still visible today—cut through the heart of Conimbriga, stretching north to Bracara Augusta (modern Braga) and south to Felicitas Iulia (modern Lisbon).
Conimbriga was occupied as far back as the eighth century B.C. by a people known to classical authors as the Celtiberians. As their name implies, the Celtiberians were a mixture of the indigenous inhabitants of ancient Portugal and the Celtic tribes that trekked through the western Pyrenees mountains into the Iberian Peninsula. The name Conimbriga memorializes this wedding of cultures: The word conim was probably used by the indigenous (pre-Indo-European) population to signify a plateau, whereas briga is a Celtic suffix meaning fortress.
It was the Romans, however, who put Conimbriga on the map. After Rome’s triumph over Carthage in the Second Punic War (218–201 B.C.), Roman armies marched into Spain and soon secured control of the entire Iberian Peninsula. After 200 B.C., more and more people began arriving from Italy; numerous second-century B.C. coins, amphoras and ceramic sherds have been found at the site—evidence of this migration. Emperors Augustus (63 B.C.–14 A.D.) and Vespasian (69–79 A.D.) transformed Conimbriga from a sleepy outpost into a bustling municipium (a self-governing municipality that conferred rights upon its citizens).
Around 25 B.C., Augustus ordered the 071construction of the city’s forum, aqueduct and public baths. Many private houses and shops were also constructed at this time. The 2-mile-long aqueduct remained in use for over four centuries. Remnants of the public baths, whose waters were fed by the aqueduct, are scattered throughout the excavated parts of the city (about 80 percent of the city remains unexcavated); at least three public baths have been preserved.
But the jewels of Conimbriga are its impressive private houses. Just off the Roman highway are two residences that visitors can walk through: the House of the Swastika, named for its dominant decorative motif (a common ancient symbol), and the adjacent House of the Skeletons. The largest domus, or villa, at Conimbriga—one of the largest private residences yet excavated in the western Roman world—is the House of Cantabar.
Conimbriga experienced a kind of building boom in the early third century A.D. In this period, the lavish House of the Fountains, known for its extensive mosaic floors, was constructed on the site of a house dating to the first century A.D. The spacious central peristyle—the loveliest I’ve seen among the scores of Roman villas I’ve visited over the years—features a series of ponds enclosed by flower beds.
The rooms surrounding the peristyle contain over 6,000 square feet of mosaic floors illustrating mythological stories—a veritable tapestry in stone. Hunters race after stags. The Minotaur awaits Theseus in the center of the labyrinth. A centaur grasps a helpless, captured fish. It’s not just the quantity of different mosaic designs that makes the House of the Fountains special but the quality of their execution.
In the second half of the third century, the Roman Empire experienced tumultuous political crises, leaving Conimbriga vulnerable to foreign invasions. In 465 and 468, a Germanic tribe known as the Swabians swept through the city, penetrating Conimbriga’s sturdy defensive walls and destroying the famed Iberian jewel in the Roman Empire’s crown.
On a small rocky plateau in central Portugal lie the remains of Conimbriga, one of the Iberian Peninsula’s premier archaeological sites. The city was abandoned in the Middle Ages and largely forgotten until the 1800s. But in Roman times, Conimbriga was an important city, boasting lavish villas and monumental architecture. A grand Roman highway—the ruts of ancient chariot wheels are still visible today—cut through the heart of Conimbriga, stretching north to Bracara Augusta (modern Braga) and south to Felicitas Iulia (modern Lisbon). Conimbriga was occupied as far back as the eighth century B.C. by a people known to classical […]
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