Bridge necropolis

It follows the Roman pattern of lining tombs along the roads out of the city, in this case at the start of the road that crossed the river towards the west and south. As early as the 17th century Bernabé Moreno de Vargas recorded that there had never been any settlement on the other side of the river, and that what could be seen there were temples, altars and burials, placed by the Romans beside the exits and the roads.

It was excavated by Antonio García y Bellido, who devoted two monographic reports to it, published in 1962 and 1966 in the Excavaciones Arqueológicas en España series, under the title of the great Roman cemetery at the far end of the bridge. It is therefore one of the funerary complexes of Mérida with good early documentation, although its dating was not revised until recently, in a specific study by José María Murciano Calles published in the journal Anas.

Nothing is visible today: the area lies beneath the built-up right bank, around Bellavista. It earns a place on the map because it explains a piece of the colony's suburban landscape that the conventional visit to Mérida ignores completely. (Location approximate, taken from where the Roman bridge lands on the right bank.)