Temple of the imperial cult
A temple belonging to the Provincial Forum of Augusta Emerita, found in 1983 on calle Holguín in Mérida, next to the Plaza de la Constitución. It is one of the most important archaeological finds of the Roman colony: a large imperial cult building whose hexastyle plan and transverse cella link it directly with the Temple of Concord in the Forum of Rome, rebuilt by Tiberius. The precinct was raised late in the reign of Tiberius (AD 14-37) as part of the provincial complex given over to the cult of the emperor. It covered 748 m² and was 38 m long. The podium, of granite ashlar faced with marble, stood more than 3 m high, and the original columns reached 14.25 m. The marble paving of the square also survives, along with fragments of cornices and capitals. The archaeological work was directed by José María Álvarez Martínez in the 1980s and documented in 2003 by Pedro Mateos Cruz, whose conclusions were published in El Foro Provincial de Augusta Emerita (2006). The site was opened to the public in 2019 after restoration by the Consorcio de la Ciudad Monumental. (Location approximate.)
- Type
- Temple
- Preservation
- Foundations
- Protection
- Listed · RI-53-0000148
- Listed
- 08/02/1973
- Coordinates
- 38.91849, -6.34685
- Photographs
- 3
What each period left here
It reads downwards: each band is a period with fabric in this site, newest first, deepest last.
4 facts
3 photographs
Roman
This site has fabric from this period. Mérida has 57 more sites built in the same layer.
See the whole layer →To build it they had to pull the neighbourhood down: the Romans demolished four blocks of houses to make room for the sacred precinct.
eldiario.es — Mérida recupera un templo de culto imperial de grandes dimensionesIts columns were 14.25 metres tall, and original marble shafts a metre and a half across are still in place.
eldiario.es — Mérida recupera un templo de culto imperial de grandes dimensionesIts six-column porch and transverse cella have allowed it to be compared with the temple of Concord in Rome: this is not a second-rate provincial temple but the kind of work raised in the capital.
Ayuntamiento de MéridaIt came to light unexpectedly: emergency work in the early 1980s uncovered the remains of a building of 748 m² and 38 metres in length in the middle of town.
Ayuntamiento de Mérida
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.
Where this page comes from
- Templo de culto imperial en Mérida — Turismo Extremadura turismoextremadura.com
- Foro romano provincial de Mérida — Wikipedia es.wikipedia.org