Remains of the first settlement of Complutum, the Roman city of Alcalá de Henares, uncovered thanks to the work of archaeologist Sandra Azcarraga and aerial photography.
According to the newspaper El Digital de Castilla la Mancha, the exact location of the first Roman Complutum was discovered under a cereal field.
The newspaper affirms that Complutum, the ancient Roman city which where Alcalá de Henares stands today, was not always there. Its first location was at the Cerro de San Juan del Viso.
In an interview with EFE, archaeologist Sandra Azcarraga explains that the finding, made possible thanks to aerial photography, leaves no doubt as images show “traces of the urban plant of the oldest Roman city in the Comunidad de Madrid, perfectly defined” with all streets distributed in a design “divided into squares” and even the places where the theater, the baths and the temple were.
[quote align=”right”]The site was found by aerial photographs and places like baths and a theater can be seen.[/quote]
This archaeologist, comparing this finding with the Italian city of Altinum in 2009, which was also made possible by the aerial photography, stresses that this is a unique finding in Spain, because it is “a whole city, preserved and with public buildings”.
The first city of Complutum, according to researches by Azcarraga, was founded in the Cerro de San Juan del Viso, a few miles from its current location, about the year 40 BC and occupied 30 hectares, where 10,000 people came to live, until 60 years after Christ.
This city was moved stone by stone barely a century after it was founded on the Henares riverside, where it is today, although some elements couldn’t be moved, as the bases and paved roads, so these residues are those that can be glimpsed uner the cereal, thanks to aerial photographs.
Alcalá seen from Cerro del Viso. Picture by: luipermom in Flickr.
Maybe this is the Roman theatre.
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