Mérida, Spain, Saturday November 29th

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What a wonderful morning we had in the Museum of Roman Art. It is in a new, purpose built building which has an open central hall and has arches everywhere. Galleries open off the main hall and link to each other at both ends, facilitating the flow of visitors. The items on display were from Mérida and district, and many had come from the sites that we had already visited. That helped us to understand them, since they were displayed in groups according to the sites where they had been found.The theatre must have been a very lavish place, with massive statues everywhere. In addition to the site displays, other aspects of Roman life were illustrated through collections found here. If we thought that the mosaic floors that we saw in situ were magnificent, the ones here surpassed them in complexity and in size.There was a marvellous ‘rogues gallery’ of Roman Emperors with their likenesses taken from coins minted during their reigns. It showed that the profile is certainly a very revealing, and not always very flattering angle for your subjects to view.A very beautiful head was that of the Genius of the Colony, which was a kind of divine tutor for the colony. It was found at the Municipal Forum.The most significant piece in the collection in terms of importance to Roman Spain was the veiled head of Augustus and a middle aged man, presenting him as the Supreme Pontiff. It was found in the sacred room at the theatre.

There were many examples of the small things of people’s lives, all beautifully crafted - fine shimmering glass vases, bone needles and clips, gold and silver jewellery, beads and votive statues and decorative paintings and statues.Bronze was a material used for many daily items and for hair and body adornments. The Romans valued beauty and skill, and some of them in Mérida could pay for very fine things indeed.We spent a few moments talking to a visitor who had a particular interest in the carvings of words. Some were virtually perfect, with the letters all the same size and shape and the lines straight. Of course, we were looking at the original ‘Times New Roman’ script, and we could see that the clean strokes had changed little over time, with only the addition of a few letters to mark the centuries. The man pointed out how the Romans were great ones for committing everything to stone, for marking every occasion in writing and for giving full details for deaths or even for renovations of the amphitheatre. They had a system that allowed smaller letters such as ‘o’ to sit inside a preceding one if it would save space, so the ‘o’ in ‘Cognoscens’ in one carving sat inside the capital ‘C’. Words were written as abbreviations, with a dot in between to show where a new word started. We could see that once he explained it, but we really would have needed a guide to be able to be able to interpret anything, since the abbreviations were for Latin words. We could work out that ‘ann’ was for annus, the Latin for ‘year’.Under the museum, in the crypt, are the excavations of a necropolis and more houses. There is also the most perfect stretch of Roman road. We simply stood and admired it.We were a little late in making it to the Columbaria, which is misnamed, according to the Museum of Roman Art. A Columbaria is like a set of multi-tiered pigeon holes, where ashes are placed. This was really a necropolis where several mausoleums had been excavated. The Romans had very strict death rituals, which had to be carried out even if a person died away from home. If the rituals were not completed properly, then the spirit would linger and could haunt people. Equally interesting to us was that parts of the cemetery had been lived in by people as recently as the 1970s.

We had run out of time to see the Mythraem house at the other end of this site, and Keith checked that we would be able to come in again with our ticket after the siesta. As we walked past we were able to peep over the hedge, and to have a reasonable look at the site.We were becoming just a little ‘excavationed out’, although we still intended to come back. It was icy cold as we rounded the corner onto the road that ran high up beside the river. The wind was even cutting through our coats and Keith’s multiple thermal layers. A glance at the Roman bridge was enough for me as I could imagine myself being blown off it. We scooted through Trajan’s Arch, a spot we felt fond of, since it always meant that we would soon be out of the cold.

After lunch, we visited the Visigoth Art Museum. We are always hearing about the Visigoths and know that they were a Germanic people who exploited the decline of the Roman Empire, but beyond that, we knew nothing. We hoped to find out just who ‘Mr Visigoth’ was. The man at the entrance seemed surprised to see us, and given the weather and the rain that we were trying to stamp and shake off us, we could understand why. Still, he put down his reading and indicated the only door as the one for us to go through. The museum is in a very old church which has the strangest acoustics. Every word echoes so much that the speaker hears it vibrating and resounding around them but the recipient, only three metres away, hears just a blur. We were moving around some display cases trying out the effects, and then Keith was trying out stamping in the stone floor when the attendant, perhaps perceiving what I could barely hear, as a herd of elephants, came in to keep an eye on us. We went back to thinking that the Visigoths should have paid more attention to the Romans, since they seemed to be well behind them in their skills in just about all forms of carving.

The Visigoths were still a mystery to us, and compared to the Roman art works excavated which focused so much on statues, nearly all the works on display were architectural or funereal. What we needed was a dramatic film starring Visigoths, in English, in a room with a heater, that we could while away a freezing afternoon enjoying. Then we could have put the items on display into some sort of human context. After all, we didn’t even know a single Visigoth name.

We moved on, just as another couple arrived. I could see that the attendant hoped that they were not jumpers. We searched for an internet café in vain, having heard that there once was one behind the Cathedral of Santa Maria. The library was shut and the Tourist Office did not have bus times.

We decided to move south again, and to leave Portugal until another time. We will go to Zafra, not so far away but a smaller town, and it sounds very interesting in the Lonely Planet Guide to Spain. Also it has very cheap accommodation and we are hoping that it has an internet café.

I went home to do some typing and thaw out. I was still not feeling well, and being out in the cold was not helping much. Keith walked over the bridge to the bus station and organised tickets for us to leave tomorrow.

Ceres

Sculptures of gladiators always seem to be 'chunky' and not done with the same refinement as other works. Perhaps the sculptors thought there was a good chance of not being paid by the gladiators they depicted, so didn't invest too much time and effort into the sculptures.

The bull ring - every Spanish city has one