Barcelona removes barriers and allows access to its wall
The Roman wall of Barcelona or rather, what has survived of those protective walls of the colony Iulia Augusta Paterna Barcino Faventia after nearly two millennia of constant urban intervention on them is from a more visible days ago … and until you can touch. This week, most of the locals -and thousands tourists pass even in this early summer autumn it seems Via Laietana- perhaps have not noticed that something has changed in the face of this motley sector Ciutat Vella. The City Council has completed a new phase of a process of recovery and enhancement of the Roman heritage of the city designed and initiated in the mandate of the Mayor Xavier Trias, when the then Councillor for Culture, Jaume Ciurana, insisted that Barcino deserved a plan rescue, hover above the ground in which it was buried and often forgotten.
Redeveloping the street Tapineria, between Avenue of the Cathedral and the Plaza del Angel, has eliminated the low walls separating the pedestrian walkway on the walls of a wall that, with this new development and interventions carried out in recent years it remains unrecognizable in many fragments, but those that remain or have been recovered looks a bit more which was begun in the late third century and was modified and rebuilt, with multiple inlaid with noble buildings and modest homes, since then until today.
The elimination of low walls and replacement with lower platforms at different levels, connected by a system of stairs and ramps, not only approximate the wall -solving the elevation difference between this and the street, but has also created an interesting space walk, rest and meet in an area of Ciutat Vella very deficient in this regard.
The works have now completed-in fact, the recovery of a passageway that was already used in the third century have given continuity to the reform of Ramon Berenguer Square, already in the previous term began to experience urban transformation and applications (with the decision to remove the parking of tourist coaches Via Laietana). The disappearance of the stretch of road that jutted on the sidewalk and the new distribution of landscaped flowerbeds and trees have served at this point to also revalue the wall-in one of its sections imposing- giving it a better view from every corner of the square. In this double action on an area of about 4,000 m2-la Ramon Berenguer Square and the street Tapineria- they have invested 1.6 million euros. Now it would not hurt that, to enhance the whole, the Barcelona City Council signaled with some informative elements this space with so much history and take extreme vigilance in anticipation of incivility, a disease that afflicts many cultural heritage sites and historical value the city has been recovering.
The draft recovery of the wall drawn by the previous municipal government raised prolong this archaeological ride newly opened toward the sea from the Plaza del Angel to the square of the Traginers, tracing the wall down the street Sotstinent Navarro (formerly called street Roman walls). A few years ago the demolition of two buildings uncovered a fragment of the defensive walls. Currently they are doing sanitation work in Sotstinent Navarro and archaeological excavations on the wall next to the school Àngel Baixeras claims used as schoolyard empty lot.
Although intramural Barcino still might hold new findings, research at this time of the Roman past of Barcelona it is more localized in the works carried out in the Sagrera. The large intermodal station that may someday see the eyes of the locals, no news. Instead, the vestiges of ancient times still coming to the surface as they move the excavations. Earlier this month the work of installing a new network of services casal future of neighborhood building known as Tower Sagrera (street Berenguer de Palou) have uncovered a Roman necropolis of the Republican era (first century BC) of the which until now he had no knowledge. In that space found at least three tombs or burial pits, although the Barcelona Archaeology Service does not rule out that there may be some more. The first of the graves excavated -a 1.70 meters below the current level of the street, under the direction of archeologist Eva Orri, it corresponds to that of a teenager.
The necropolis may be related to the Roman town of Pont del Treball Digne, set just 200 meters, from which it is known that it was already occupied in the first century B.C