Italica

Italica is an old Roman city just at the northern tip of Seville. I admit the fact that it was Roman does actually automatically qualify it as being old so this is a form of tautology.


The main feature of Italica is probably its amphitheatre, a Coloseum style "stadium" that used to seat 25,000. That's only 5,000 less than AAMI Park, the new rectangular stadium in Melbourne! And it's round so you could probably play cricket in it if you had to, except that the area under the wicket is a pit where (I presume) the unfortunate "involuntary participants" where kept while waiting their turn.


Walking through the amphitheatre you realise that stadium design hasn't changed that much. Put a roof on it, a couple of scoreboards and Closed Circuit TeleVision and you've got Docklands.

There are a couple of tunnels that I presume were for the Roman guards. A couple of tunnels lead from the pit in the middle to the ends were the prisoners were led up before entering the arena.


There were a couple of rooms (one on each side) were the gladiators carried out their final preparations before walking out into the stadium. I couldn't be sure which was for the "home" side and which the "away" side but one was slightly more elaborate than the other - so I figured that was for the home team.


There is a tunnel that goes under the stands and circles the entire arena, just like the walkways at the MCG and Docklands. There are a couple of other outer rings but they only go part of the way around. It is not difficult to envisage the place full of noisy and excited spectatorsw. Nowadays things are more comfortable but ultimately the overall concept hasn't really changed. Excellent quality design and engineering. The Romans worked in stone of course, so their work really was built to last.


But once you're past the amphitheatre there is the whole city of Italica. Even though a lot has been excavated there is still a huge area to be dug up, it will take a long time. It really does cover a very large area, large enough to hold a city of course!


Walking through the Roman streets gives an idea of what it would have been like walking through a Roman city, and how well organised it was. A lot of the excavated materials have been removed to the Archaeological Museum (see yesterday's post) for safe keeping and preservation but there is still quite a lot on site.


We walked through what is left of a couple of Roman houses which is really interesting. They would be big even by today's standards. Some beautiful and elaborate mosaics are still out there too. I have enough photos of mosaics to last me a lifetime but some of them are very skilfully put together and look stunning.

I was impressed by Italica. By immersing myself into the place and imagining the living and thriving metropolis (it probably helped that I watched the Rome TV series, I kept imagining Verenius and Pullo in the place) I got a lot out of it and recommend it. The signage was brief but informative which suits me. It was also in Spanish which was fine for me but not good for everyone.