We arrived in Barcelona, and were driven south to spend the first three nights in Tarragona, one of Spain's oldest cities, founded on a clifftop some 60 metres above sea level. The Romans (once they'd taken it from the Iberians) were quite fond of it, naming it Tarraco and making it the capital of the province of Hispana Citerior. Their Visigothic successors made it one of Spain's leading bishoprics; during the Moorish period, its inhabitants are said to have been entirely Jewish, to the extent that when it was retaken by the Christians the new cathedral was designed by Jewish architects. The town reached its peak in the fourteenth century, and declined rapidly thereafter; its modern revival is due to the tourist industry and the popularity of its local wines.

Our hotel lay outside the old town, leaving us with a long but gentle walk up the Rambla Nova and the Rambla Vella on the landward side of the clifftop. This would take us past a life-size bronze statue of a favourite Catalan past-time: building human castles. (The musicians on the left of the statue are bronze, too.)

We entered the old town at its southwest corner, by way of the Via de L'Imperi Roma and the Portal del Roser. The walls of the old town -- most of which still stand; the missing sections were demolished by Napoleon's troops -- show in microcosm the ages of the town's construction: rough Iberian blocks at the base, neater Roman work above that, and above that the refortification carried out by British troops during the War of the Spanish Succession (1704-1711). (The British eventually went home empty-handed except for Gibraltar.) The four photographs below show the modern cobbled mosaic of the Via de L'Imperi Roma; the masonry on the town walls adjacent to it; and exterior and interior views of the Portal del Roser. The flag in the last of this group is the national flag of Catalonia.

    

    

A separate entrance next to Portal del Roser gives access to the Passeig Arqueologic, a walk which (like Girona's similar Passeig) takes one around the outside of the walls (and is the best place from which to see them). Here's a selection of photographs, showing the manicured gardens (with part of the Iberian/Roman wall) at the entrance to the Passeig Arqueologic; a view of the walls with a medieval tower in the background and artillery bastions from the early modern period in fromt of the Iberian/Roman walls; two views of me against the walls, to give a sense of their scale; a view of part of the the cathedral rising over the walls; and the Minerva Tower, named for the fragment of Roman-era relief sculpture it bears. At first glance, this appears to be an instance of refortification with a fallen Roman block during the pre-Moorish period, but is in fact original -- or at any rate a replica of the original, which is now in the Museu Arqueologic.

    

    

    

On the other side of the old town from Portal del Roser, at the point where the old walls end, there is a reconstructed medieval tower which allows views over and gives access to the remains of the Roman Circus. Adjacent to it is another tower, a much-modified medieval structure on the foundations of an earlier Roman building; this second tower is called the Pretorio, although whether the earlier building had anything to do with the Roman army, never mind the elite Praetorian Guard, is open to conjecture. It now houses the Museu d'Historia de Tarragona, with displays in Catalan and English on the evolution of the city. (The collections of the Museu Arqueologic in the modern building next to it are also worth inspection.)

Below are some photographs of the reconstructed tower and the remains of the Roman Circus. The first group of four includes two views of rebuilt arches and doorways in the walls of the Pretorio (including a filled-in arch of very obviously Moorish origin) and an overall view of the reconstructed tower and the Roman Circus from the top of the Pretorio.

    

    

The next group of four photographs concern solely the Roman Circus. The first shows a view of its remaining exterior wall from outside (we are looking at part of the curve at the southeastern end); the second a view down into some of the passages which would have run under the spectator seating at the southeastern end; the third a ground floor view of other passages at the southeastern end, with behind them a large mural indicating how the structure would have appeared to the citizens of the time; and the fourth shows part of the surviving foundations of the long southern side of the Circus, neatly dividing one side of the street (the Trinquet Nou) from the other.

    

    

A small section of a wall of a Roman public building also survives in the Placa Forum (named, obviously, after the Forum which stood there in Roman times -- although the Placa itself occupies only a fraction of the Forum's area, and now seems chiefly notable for its fruit and vegetable sellers). It is adjacent to Place del Rei, which also occupies part of the original Forum site; it is on the right below, taken from the top of the Pretorio.

    

A charm of old towns everywhere -- well, everywhere in continental Europe, at any rate -- is their narrow winding streets. So we couldn't resist the following: two views of narrow streets in the old town (the second is of a street named Cavallers, and the orangey-pink building on the right is the Academica Musica), and two views of some of the balconies which overlook these streets (in the second case also displaying the national flag of Catalonia).

    

    

And thus we begin to approach the Catedral, the single most enormous building in the old town and one which would loom over it all were it not for the narrow streets which hide it from view until you're right next to it. But, first, views of the Placa Pallol, just inside the Portal del Roser, at the western end of Cavallers; and of the Consell Camarcal, adjacent to the Catedral itself. We include the Consell for its architectural merit; nothing we have consulted advises its function....although it is (or was) a high status building; note the richly carved, albeit very pitted, column capital shown in the close-up below right.

        

Building work on the Catedral began in the 12th century and was concluded in the 15th, although it's obvious from the facade (on the left below) that the work was never completed: the pinnacles proposed in the architects' original plans were abandoned as too expensive. In compensation, we have a very large rose window and fine 13th century statues of saints, bishops and martyrs. Some of this decoration is also shown in the photographs below; as is a distant view of the Catedral from Pretorio, to supply an idea of the size of the complex relative to the old town.

    

    

There is much to see in the Catedral -- a 1430 retablo, a 16th century organ, a Museu Diocesano of the Catedral Treasury: none of which visitors are permitted to photograph. (Poot-pootety poot!) So we had to be content with pictures of the cloisters and the fantabulously decorated capitals of the columns which surround it....as below. Including (very bottom right) a cheeky (but definitely post-Moorish) camel.

    

    

    

Lastly, or almost lastly, it's time to walk down to the seafront, to engage with modern Tarragona on the so-called Balcon which runs around the edge of the 60 metre clifftop which demarcates the seaward edge of the old town. The restaurants there serve excellent paellas; but we also found time to examine the Roman Amphitheatre (a structure always founded outside the limits of the Roman city it served).

Lying further outside the old town is the Palaeochristian Necropolis, the earliest burials in which date from the second half of the third century. The museum which occupies the site was then closed for restoration; but it was possible to view the (now empty) tombs laid out in its grounds.

    

Even further away, outside the city itself and on the way to Montblanc -- but it's easier to place the photographs here than on that page -- is the 123 metre high Roman aqueduct now called Las Ferreres, which supplied Tarraco with water from the River Gaya.