Provincial imperial cult complex (the old «Provincial Forum»)
A great monumental complex in the northern part of Augusta Emerita, given over to the imperial cult of the province of Lusitania, traditionally called the «Provincial Forum» and now known in scholarship as the Provincial Imperial Cult Complex. It was organised around the arch known as «of Trajan», which worked as the gate into a precinct bounded by a double-aisled portico 11 m wide, at whose centre — on a square paved with marble slabs — stood a temple with a cella barlonga: the podium found in 1983 at calle Holguín 37-39.
- Type
- Forum
- Preservation
- Foundations
- Protection
- Listed · RI-53-0000148
- Listed
- 08/02/1973
- Coordinates
- 38.91846, -6.34616
- Photographs
- 0
What it is and what is left
The idea of a second public space in this area was put forward by José María Álvarez Martínez in the early 1980s, and was confirmed by the excavation of the calle Holguín temple, read first as a capitolium and later identified as a temple of the imperial cult. Between 1999 and 2006 the Mérida Institute of Archaeology and the Consorcio de la Ciudad Monumental took on the architectural and urban study of the complex, which produced an overall plan for the first time (Mateos Cruz et al., 2006). The study of the building techniques of the arch and the temple showed that both are contemporary and of the reign of Tiberius: their eastern and western limits match to the millimetre and are aligned in a straight line.
Later work has kept changing the known plan. In 2016 a refit of the bar «La Tahona» (calle Alvarado) exposed the western closing wall of the precinct, 3 m high and more than 15 m long, along with a perpendicular wall unknown until then, which forces a revision of the published plan.
The remains are spread across plots, basements and shop premises in the town centre, and are only partly and piecemeal visible; the podium of the calle Holguín temple is still waiting for a programme of excavation and presentation. Part of the Archaeological Ensemble of Mérida, World Heritage (UNESCO, 1993).
What each period left here
It reads downwards: each band is a period with fabric in this site, newest first, deepest last.
1 facts
0 photographs
Roman
This site has fabric from this period. Mérida has 57 more sites built in the same layer.
See the whole layer →The name of this place has changed as research advanced. Almagro Basch proposed in 1976 that it was a second forum — the «Provincial Forum» — and the discovery of the calle Holguín temple in 1983 strengthened the idea; today it is debated whether such a forum existed at all or whether this was a great square given over to the imperial cult, which is why Pedro Mateos's standard study (2006) speaks of the «so-called Provincial Forum».
P. Mateos Cruz, «El conjunto provincial de culto imperial de Augusta Emerita» (CSIC)Below the deepest layer of each site is the ground itself: what has not been excavated yet, or what left nothing built. The catalogue only claims what is documented.
A short walk from here
Straight-line distances, worked out from the coordinates of each site.