Christine had a terrible night with coughing and little sleep so she elected to stay in bed this morning to see if she could sleep a little. Our excursion to ancient Roman ruins wasn’t very appealing to her. Poor thing, she’s really not in good shape.
Off we went by bus to the ancient Roman city of Italica. It was a short trip and only 10 of the group were in this huge bus. Italica was founded in 206 BC by a Roman general who created the city for his retiring Italic army soldiers. Most soldiers were inducted into the Roman army for 25 years, starting at the age of 15. So, if you weren’t killed in battle or died from disease, you came out of the army a rather penniless old man (in Roman years), so the Roman general wanted to do something for these old guys. Eventually, the city expanded into a flourishing city. The site we toured was really the second Italica. The first Italica, Vetus urbs, is currently underneath the village of Santiponce. Lucia said that when people living in the village do any kind of construction, they find Roman ruins which they use in their homes. She said she knows someone who has Roman column capitals as a base for a coffee table and another has mosaic tile floors taken from found ruins. Since the entire village would have to be relocated, there is no incentive to unearth the old city of Italica. The new city, Nova urbs, has been somewhat unearthed, but there isn’t sufficient funding available to fully develop the ruins.
The Romans created wide cobbled streets. They were the first to add sidewalks, with many of them shaded by trees. The city was laid out with a main north-south street, and a main east-west street, with the public fountain at the intersection. Some 8,000 people lived in Italica and the footprint of some of the houses are visible.
The Romans were good at developing waterways via aqueducts. They constructed miles and miles of aqueducts to bring water to their cities. The other thing they figured out was that dealing with waste was important, so they also created sewer systems. That was one of the first things we learned about in Italica. This is not a charming subject, but nonetheless, an important one. So here is a public latrine. Water was piped into the trench to take waste away.
The location of Italic was selected for its vantage point. It is on a hill which, during Roman times, one could see the Guadalquivir river. It really is a beautiful setting and the surrounding area is nice. You can see the Sevilla Tower from Italica, so it’s not far from the city center.
There are a lot of mosaic tile floors present. These have been unearthed, but left exposed to the elements, so many have deteriorated. There is an effort underway to restore the mosaics. This is a painstaking process whereby each tiny piece of the mosaic is removed, cleaned and replaced in its original position. If a piece is too badly damaged, they look around for a piece from mosaics that have been too damaged to restore to find a piece that will fit. I don’t think I’d want that job. One of the areas was the footprint of a nobleman’s house. The richer you were, the more elaborate the decorations.
We’ve seen a lot of Roman tile floors in our travels, and I’m always amazed by how intricate some of them are. The painstaking work that goes into these earliest mosaics, tiny little pieces placed one by one, is awesome.
A big draw to Italica is its amphitheater. It apparently was used in filming some of the Game of Thrones. The structure is pretty badly worn in many places but you can get the sense for the enormity of the crowds attending gladiator duels.
One of the things our guide Alicia showed us was how the “house rules” were posted. In the tunnel entrance where the gladiators would enter, there was a large plaque on the wall that kind of looked like a chalkboard. But they wanted to be sure that the gladiators didn’t change the rules, so the plaque was a bronze sheet and the rules were engraved in the bronze for all to see. No changing the rules here!
At the end of the Italica tour, Lucia wanted to celebrate our final tour so she had purchased a bottle of orange wine that she passed around. Everyone who tried it found it too sweet and some said it definitely tasted like cough medicine. I’m glad I’m not drinking!
After our visit to Italica, we rode the bus back to Sevilla and got dropped off near a bridge over the river so we could walk to Triana, a neighborhood across the river. One of our group who skipped the Italica visit was going to meet us in Triana, so Lucia asked Candace to knock on Christine’s door to see if she was feeling up to joining us. She was, so we met up with Christine and Candace, which was nice. I was happy to see Christine up and moving around.
Triana is a vibrant area full of shops, bars and restaurants. It’s people are fiercely proud of their neighborhood and don’t really identify as Sevilla city. Triana has a long history of pottery and ceramic industries, which are active today.
We went to a ceramics museum in Triana which made both Christine and me think of our dear friend Deeny in Florida who is a potter. I wish she could have been with us to help enlighten us on all the information there was on the history of pottery and ceramics in Triana. There were great little videos and old photographs showing the process. The size of some of the kilns and what they did to close them up before firing was incredible.
I read one information panel that said this. “Clay is a hydrated aluminium silicon, although before being defined by science, it has long been a material loaded with symbolic values for human beings. Thus, this is also the case for ceramics and the reason resides in the fact that the four basic elements of nature are involved in its creation: earth, water, air and fire.” I liked that description, and maybe that’s why I’m so taken with ceramics.
There were many exhibits of ceramics from pre-Medieval times right up to the present. We saw a lot of beautiful hand-painted work.
Triana, and all of Sevilla, is covered in beautiful ceramic tiles. Everywhere you look, you’ll see some kind of colorful and beautiful tile on the buildings.
After the museum, Lucia took us to a traditional Spanish bar/restaurant for lunch. The one thing is it was LOUD! With the walls covered in tiles, the sound was bouncing all over the place. On Sundays, many families get together with extended family and friends for lunch. And in the area we were sitting, there were 2 long tables filled with people who were quite animated and loud. It made having any conversation at our table nearly impossible. We did have some really nice shrimp and calamari, though, so at least the food was good. This bullhead was hanging over our table.
After our late lunch it was back to the hotel for a short rest. Then it was time for the featured event of the evening, flamenco! This is what Christine has really been looking forward to. The flamenco performance was in a small theater and it was packed. Flamenco is quite a draw all over Sevilla, and especially in Triana. I didn’t know that it originates with the Romanii people (gypsies) and that the earliest documentation of flamenco dates back to the 1770s.
The show was really terrific. The guitar player was fantastic. The lead male dancer was a bit over the top for me. He had long hair and kept snapping his head so that his hair flew over the top of his head. There was another male who was a singer who also danced that we liked more than the lead. The lead female was really, really good. She did a very extensive dance that included using her shawl, spinning it around and creating a wonderful visual. I do not know how they can move their feet as fast as they do and how their ankles and knees can endure the incredible striking of the feet that occurs. At any rate, the show was thoroughly enjoyable and Christine loved it.
Christine and I got in hot water with Lucia after the show. Some of our group were going out for drinks and dinner, but one person was walking back to the hotel. We said we’d walk back with her. There were a couple of group members around us when we left and I assumed they would say we were on our way back to the hotel. Our mistake was in not telling Lucia we weren’t going to dinner with her. I guess she held everyone up while she was trying to find us. On our way back to the hotel, the three of us stopped in a shop for a gelato, and as we were sitting there eating out gelato, my phone rang, and at the same time the dinner group and Lucia were standing in the window of the shop starring at us. Lucia came in and gave me a piece of her mind. I was embarrassed for sure, but I was a little irked that none of the people who knew we left with Linda (the other Linda), including her husband, didn’t mention to Lucia that we had left with Linda. Oh well, my bad.
We did get back to the hotel in good shape. The drinks/dinner people didn’t get back until after midnight, and so I’m really glad we didn’t go out. These full tour days don’t really sync with late nights of drinking and eating.
Tomorrow is our final day, and we only have one more scheduled activity, a cooking class. Then, we get to eat what we cooked as our final group meal. Should be fun.