El Catedral & The Roman Ruins. January 20th

Today we took our first trip for Barcelona Past & Present, based off of the fact that my knowledge of the history of Barcelona is slim to none today was already extremely insightful! Still struggling a little to find my way around the city Emily and I stopped in a store to ask for directions to El Cathedral by Jaume I stop where we were supposed to meet up with our class. While we didn’t enter the Cathedral we did learn that it has been around for close to 1500 years since the Romans ruled here and was a church for the bourgeoisie in Spain. While waiting for the rest of the class we also had the opportunity to take in the exterior of the Cathedral with it’s extremely tall height and what I would assume would be a sense of grandeur from the inside.

We made our way around the Cathedral and got a glimpse of the remaining columns from the Temple of Augustus. This was established to represent the Roman power that existed in “Barcino” at the time and was the town’s major ceremonial building.

It has been an exciting opportunity to actually be able to see the sites and remnants of buildings and streets discussed in our textbook, much more insightful than simply reading about them or viewing powerpoints on the matter. When I had a group of friends come to visit Barcelona I was able to point out many historical points in this area which I had viewed and learned about in our class. After viewing these remaining pillars and a few other notable objects we proceeded into the museum housing the restored ancient Romain remains of the town and/or society.  It was amazing to view parts of the city as close to being as they were at the time as is possible when the Romans were inhabiting Barcelona and it was also spectacular that they had been preserved so well. We took the elevator down to the ruins and the museum compared it to “going back in time” all the way to 600 AD. Among the remnants were sections of the Roman wall, foundations of buildings, and bathing areas. Our teacher pointed out methods that were used to preserve food, make wine, and handle laundry all of which were extremely innovative for their time. There were huge stone canister looking structures which would be filled with salt and food to store until it was necessary to consume. We also learned that ashes would be used to remove stains from clothing and urine to disinfect or clean the clothing. The connections to our ways of life now are fascinating when walking amongst these ruins. There was also a large exhibit of artifacts that were found while excavating the ruins so we could view jewelry, coins, even tweezers used by the Romans. Finally, there was a small model of a Patrician house at the time which showed us the home of a typical Roman family. Most of the house was outside as they just required their smaller rooms for sleeping although the walls were ornately painted, leaving the servants walls a blank white. You could almost envision the day to day life of a typical family. Finally when leaving the museum and were back on normal street level we viewed a chapel which apparently had been just for the use of the King which was interesting because of it’s large size and grandeur. All in all this was a very memorable field trip and we learned a LOT about the history of the Romans, it makes you wonder what buildings and items from that time lie still under the ground left to discover!