Baelo Claudia

Place Description

Baelo Claudia began in the late second century BCE as a center for trade with North Africa through Tangier and for salting fish and production of garum, or fish sauces. Baelo's high point was reached about the time of Claudius, when it was made a municipium. An earthquake in the second century CE hastened its decline, though there was some revival in the third century, until it was totally abandoned by the seventh century CE. Nowhere else in the Iberian peninsula is it possible to find all the elements of Roman urbanism in such good condition: forum, temples of the capitol to the traditional gods of the Romans, a temple to an oriental divinity (in this case, Isis), curia, administrative buildings, market, theater, baths, aqueducts, private houses, an industrial zone, and a complete city wall. Only an arena seems missing.

The two private houses where there may have been gardens are near the port and are right next to the fish processing establishments – but upwind of them. They were excavated and documented in the early 1920s by P. Paris and each occupy some 500 square meters. They faced each other with a street with porticoes on both sides between them. Both were two-story houses organized around a central peristyle courtyard. In the first, House 1 or West house, it seems highly probable that there was a garden. In the second, the House of the Sundial, one source may be read to imply that the center of the peristyle was paved in opus signinum and thus could not be a garden. Another reading of the same passage, however, puts the opus signinum only on the gutters around the perimeter of the courtyard.

Places

• Baelo (Pleiades:256005)
• Baelo Claudia (deserted settlement) (TGN:8712326)
• Baetica (Pleiades:862)
• Baetica (province) (TGN:6000567)
• Andalusia (Pleiades:195101632)