Mérida Ciudad Patrimonio de la Humanidad

History has been generous with Mérida. Established between two watercourses, the Guadiana and the Albarregas (known as Anas
and Barraeca in Roman times) the city managed to maintain, since its foundation, a free-flowing dialogue with both rivers.
Nevertheless, rivers, subject to the uncertain will of the seasons, could not always be trusted.

not always be trusted. Roman engineers erected two bridges to avoid the cyclic betrayal of these riverbanks, treason that took the shape of relentless flooding. The city’s bridges made it an obligatory crossing point towards all parts of the Iberian Peninsula and,

in short, were a source of glory or anguish during the last twenty centuries. They are singular constructions due to their magnificent condition and, in the case of the bridge over the Guadiana, to its being one of Rome’s most important engineering feats still in use.

Since its founding as a Colony around 25 BC, and throughout its first two centuries of existence, those who designed its decoration and urban development had a sole purpose in mind: emulating the metropolis. They wanted to reproduce Rome in this remote part of the Empire so that it would, in turn, be an example for dozens of municipalities, farmhouses and country houses in the Western Iberian Peninsula.

Its promotion, around 15 BC, as the capital of a new and extensive province, Lusitania, gave the Augusta Emerita of that time a new character: the directed city became the directing city, governing its territory. As an important crossroads, which it still is, the city soon witnessed the establishment and evolution, on occasions, of new ways of understanding the real and imagined world, of developing, within it, both material and divine matters. Along with an amalgam of religions from the Middle East and Egypt, Judaism and Christianity also took root in Mérida.

Persecution under Diocletian led to the martyring in the city of Eulalia, a Saint that would experience a decisive ascendance during Late Antiquity and the beginning of the Middle Ages in the Iberian Peninsula.

And it was during that time that Mérida was the capital of all Hispania, where the Roman representative governing it kept his vast entourage. While the Empire was being inexorably ruined, this city preserved the spirit of a civilisation that was fighting to survive. Later on the bishops of Mérida, then under Visigoth administration, would be the ones in charge of maintaining the city’s material and spiritual prestige. Classical civilisation, by means of the local church, was not extinguished; on the contrary, it remained until the Omeya emirate like a kind of lagging Hellenism.

History undoubtedly treasures more arguments featuring Mérida but these ones, the most remote and with such a generous archaeological harvest, are sufficient to highlight the need for visiting Mérida. Here, apart from satisfying the eyes’ unstoppable curiosity, the visitor will see the past transmuted into a source of leisure and education, thanks to the city’s excellent museums and exhibitions. Occasionally, the ruins awake from their lethargy and take us, just as they did at their height, under the timeless cloak of culture; this is what happens during the Classical Theatre Festival.

After carefully exploring this city, an indelible personal experience will remain in one’s intimate memory: discovering, in order, the numerous pieces belonging to a cultural puzzle that houses more than seven centuries of Spanish history, of old Spanish history.

José Luis Mosquera Müller
Official City of Mérida Chronicler

Mérida City Council
Plaza de España, 1
06800 – Mérida
Tel.: +34 924 380 115
Fax: +34 924 380 183

www.merida.es
merida@ciudadespatrimonio.org

city map
distances in km.


© World Heritage Cities Group, 2010 Desarrollo y programación: Soluciones IP