Conimbriga

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House of Fountains
The Horsemen - one of several elaborate mosaics in Conimbriga

Conimbriga (also Conímbriga in Portuguese spelling ) was an ancient Roman city in what is now Portugal . It is located 16 km from Coimbra and less than two kilometers from Condeixa-a-Nova .

history

The earliest archaeological finds are of Celtic origin and date from the Iron Age of the 9th century BC. It will be an Ibero-Celtic settlement. This can be seen from the ending “-briga”, which is typical for Celtic settlements. There are more than 100 Iron Age sites on the Iberian Peninsula that end in this way. Conimbriga was born in 139 BC. Conquered by Roman troops and part of the Lusitania province of the Roman Empire .

In the time of Augustus , the city was expanded to include public thermal baths , a forum and a city wall. When Conimbriga received town charter during the time of Constantius II , the Augustan forum was demolished and replaced by a larger one. The city is divided into two areas: a residential area with rich mosaics and a central square in the north, and a middle-class area of ​​houses, mostly inhabited by craftsmen, with a large building from the time of Claudius in the south, which his excavator, Virgilio Correia, considered pre-Christian basilica indicated.

In 468 the Suebi conquered the city. Conimbriga, which already had to be supplied by the Romans through a long aqueduct from Alcabideche , desertified , lost its status as a bishopric to Aeminium ( Coimbra ) and was in the 7th / 8th centuries. Abandoned by the inhabitants in the 19th century.

Archaeological digs

Although not the largest Roman city in Portugal, Conimbriga is now the best preserved thanks to centuries of siltation. The city walls are largely intact, the mosaics and foundations of many houses and public buildings have been preserved. The system of hypocaust heating is still in place in the bathrooms, mostly with no floor . According to archaeological estimates, ten percent of the city has been excavated from 1899 to today (January 2013).

Of the various excavations, those of Virgilio Correia 1930-1944 were the most systematic. Within the walls he found several luxurious houses, one of them with private thermal baths, and an early Christian basilica . Correia also exposed the city walls, some public thermal baths, 569 m² of mosaics and, with the central garden, a supply system for 500 fountains.

meaning

Cities like Bracara Augusta (today Braga ), Pax Julia (today Beja ) or Olissipo (since 48 BC Colonia Felicitas Iulia , today Lisbon ) exceeded Conimbriga in importance and size. Conimbriga is still considered the most important Roman archaeological site in Portugal, as it is one of the rare cases in which no new city has emerged on top of the old Roman city. Over time, stones were removed for structures in nearby Condeixa-a-Velha , and the archaeological excavations carried out in the late 19th century and in the 1930s cleared some areas without today's scientific standards of documentation accuracy. However, with Conimbriga, a free, not newly built and therefore unchanged excavation field of an important Roman administrative city of the province of Lusitania is available, most of which has not yet been excavated.

With over 150,000 visitors annually (2010), of which only a small part were schoolchildren and students (approx. 30,000), Conimbriga is also of importance for tourism.

photos

  • Street

  • chapter

  • Mosaic with fish

  • Mosaic with a labyrinth

  • Remains of a Roman villa

  • Floor mosaic

  • Remains of a building

  • Remains of the thermal baths

literature

Web links

Commons : Conimbriga  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Documentation Conimbriga, Cidade Escondida , published as DVD by PCCA, Oeiras 2010, can be seen here on YouTube , accessed on January 1, 2013.

Coordinates: 40 ° 6 ′  N , 8 ° 30 ′  W