- 1 hour ago
Roman Empire By Train With Alice Roberts - Season 1 - Episode 05: The Rome Of France
Category
🎥
Short filmTranscript
00:03I'm on another train and another adventure into the past but this is my most ambitious
00:11journey to date. I'm going in search of the Roman Empire. Taking the train I'll be traveling
00:221,300 miles through Italy France and Spain to discover its origins and the secrets of its
00:30success I'll be exploring some well-known Roman sites this is where you can hear Pompeii and some
00:38unfamiliar ones there is nobody here from the massive it's curved yeah to the miniature it's
00:47like a fourth century Barbie doll I want to know how a single city comes to control such a vast
00:53territory experts from around the world will help me bring to life Roman culture the sands of Capua
01:01become the jungles of India and provide insights into why this Empire was so successful who said
01:08the time machine does not exist we got it in this episode I visit the finest Roman temple
01:16still standing what a wonderful treasure they have in the city yeah it's fantastic I cross the river
01:24garden 50 meters up and we're out into the sunshine and I land in the wealthy Spanish port of Emporias
01:34this is consummate artistry in the middle of the first century BCE Julius Caesar was pushing the
01:52boundaries of the Empire even further he embarked on his Gallic Wars conquering the land he knew as Gaul or
02:00Gallia roughly corresponding to modern France when the Romans reached Nîmes there was already a
02:07settlement here inhabited by local Gauls by 28 BCE in the time of the Emperor Augustus that settlement had
02:15become a fully fledged Roman colony the city would be stamped with the hallmark of Rome acquiring temples a
02:24forum and a huge amphitheatre but the Romans also left a more subtle mark on the city
02:34you walk around Nîmes and you start to see crocodiles everywhere why is a crocodile the symbol of Nîmes we
02:43can
02:43blame the Romans
02:51crocodiles can be found all over Nîmes it's on the city's coat of arms and even its football team the
03:01crocodile commemorates Augustus's victory over Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in 31 BCE
03:10ending the civil war and making Egypt part of the Roman Empire hence the Nile crocodile Sophie hi Alice
03:20bonjour bonjour bonjour how are you very good this is incredible this is wonderful it's an absolute masterpiece
03:32this is the Maison Carré
03:36built between 2 and 4 CE it is arguably the best preserved temple from the Roman world
03:47it stands 17 meters tall and boasts 30 Corinthian columns
03:59the temple was dedicated to Gaius and Lucius Caesar grandsons of Augustus who both died in their youth
04:09it seems that this really was a local initiative in other words it's not something that came down from
04:16Rome it was really something they wanted to take part in this period of imperial mourning and so that's
04:21how the building was constructed so this is about worshipping the imperial family but also about very
04:27much demonstrating your allegiance absolutely absolutely yeah first of all though I want to get
04:33into the temple itself okay yeah we'll have to be careful because we have to start with the right
04:39foot what happens if you start with the left you don't want to anger the gods oh okay so this
04:44is
04:44literally starting on the right foot this is literally starting on the right foot does it come from there
04:48obviously yeah okay let's go let's go on the right foot the ultimate origin of this idea is lost but
04:57it
04:57may have come from the Greeks starting on the left foot was considered unlucky suddenly very dark after
05:04that bright sunshine yes it is it is it's a stark contrast now so this is intriguing because there's
05:13basically nothing in here I mean there's a modern exhibition yeah yeah I mean it's it's a bit unfortunate
05:20because it's true that uh the rest has disappeared you probably had two and possibly three statues because
05:28you had the two grandsons and obviously Augustus that seems normal you would have had an altar probably
05:34inside as well as some type of furniture for the whatever instruments they needed for their religious
05:41ceremonies and stuff like that but what we have here is a scale model of what it was like in
05:46Roman times
05:47and you can also see that it was surrounded by a portico of columns there are a few remains on
05:55this
05:55side here okay so that was discovered in the 19th century when they cleared all the space around the
06:00Maison Carré and they dug their way down to the original Roman levels and that's how they discovered that
06:06yeah yeah I just find it so incredible that that everything else has effectively disappeared above ground
06:13but you're left with this perfectly preserved Roman temple in the middle of it in the middle of the
06:18city yes exactly exactly it's it's it's a stroke of luck I mean really what a wonderful treasure to have
06:25in the
06:26city yeah it's fantastic I never tire of it no I wouldn't
06:34across the square is a more recent building designed by British architect Norman Foster
06:40he used the Maison Carré as inspiration oh Sophie this is going to be the best view of any cafe
06:46anywhere extraordinary no I can see why you love the city yeah it's a wonderful place to be in
06:54what happened to Nîmes after the first century well Nîmes remained a large roman town until the mid-third
07:04early fourth century uh which is a first moment when you sort of feel a a sort of contraction in
07:13other words yeah there are districts of the town that were abandoned so you feel that something went
07:17wrong and um and then the city reforms around the 10th between the 10th and the 12th century uh just
07:25around the Maison Carré from between the Maison Carré and the arena and so you end up with a much
07:30smaller town the Roman city was 220 hectares which is 600 acres and the medieval city is only 80 acres
07:38so 30 hectares so it's much smaller one seventh of the original Roman town you've got that period of
07:44time where it's essentially contracting and falling into ruin but also that means it's not being built
07:51over and built over so perhaps that means that actually you're more likely to have relics from
07:56the Roman period surviving through you can feel that there was a lot of respect over the centuries
08:02from the i would say from the 16th century on there was a lot of respect for the Roman buildings
08:07it's part of our everyday life also when people go to the arena and when they attend a show
08:14they are in complete connection with the Roman spectators came before them and so the people
08:20of Nîmes say je connais les arennes i know the arena because they don't know anything about its history
08:26or very little but they they relate to the venue which is exactly what it's all about we must go
08:32there
08:32the population of Roman Nîmes reached an estimated 60 000 making it a very large town for the time
08:48that's a lot of people to keep entertained but augustus had that factored into his building program
08:57oh
09:00look at this arena yeah
09:07les arennes is a spectacular amphitheatre built shortly after rome's colosseum
09:14and almost 2000 years later it's still in use
09:25thank you
09:27oh wow so this has been renovated a bit but the basic fabric is roman the basic fabric is absolutely
09:35roman
09:36few of the steps were reconstructed because as it had been lived in a lot of the steps had been
09:42ripped
09:42out it's been lived in yep yeah exactly
09:48i hope we're going to the best seats in the house safety well technically they they are the best seats
09:54in the house because it's really the best view of the amphitheatre
10:01where do we go now oh there's another one you know there's another this is the last one yes it's
10:07the best one
10:13no you lied there's another one
10:17five steps a short one a very short one wow yeah oh that is phenomenal
10:28you get a sense of a size when you're up here and they're getting ready for a show yes they're
10:32getting ready for the summer festival concerts what was the original capacity do you know it's 24 000
10:3924 24 000 yeah and today we're sort of down to 17 000 because part of the seating is missing
10:46yeah but it's uh yeah it's 24 000. it's really impressive isn't it yeah yeah i've been thinking
10:52of having explored this expansion of empire before it's an empire you know the territory of the of the
10:58romans and i wonder what it was like for people here knowing that the romans were coming because they
11:03must have known and they would have been aware of this road that was being built and then suddenly
11:08before you know it they're in town they're in town there must have been people that were very
11:14disquiet and by that and then there must have been other people that actually welcomed it the romans
11:20brought about a positive change in the elite you see how the uh the native celts they they latinize
11:28their name to a certain extent because they want to be part of the thing okay they want to be
11:33part of
11:33this evolution there's another interesting development which is a perfect illustration of
11:37what is known as the pax romana and that's the fact that these the celts lived in on hilltop cities
11:42which
11:43were known as opidum opida in plural and a few of these opida in this region were abandoned after the
11:51conquest because people could then live at the bottom of the hill near the water near their fields and
11:58they didn't have to spend their time trudging up and down because they knew they were safe and
12:03so that's a perfect illustration of the pax romana yeah sometimes you know when people ask me when
12:08did the romans leave i say they never left because they never came that's the same as in in england
12:12yeah
12:12you have the administrators who are sent in obviously officers in the army etc etc but then gradually
12:19people take over and you see this in the houses you see how the native celts never represented their
12:25gods they never had statues of the gods and suddenly you see representations of their gods yeah in the roman
12:32fashion with little altars domestic altars and so on which is really interesting and that's how the
12:37civilization spread to my mind but knowing that there are some colonizers i think is interesting
12:42and that the literature supports that that there were some people who were coming in definitely and
12:46of course what we will be able to do in the fullness of time with the sciences around archaeology so
12:52ancient dna isotope analysis we'll actually be able to get a better handle on just how much of that was
12:58going on how much of what we're looking at is the transformation of um the culture that was here
13:03before and the people that were here before and how much of it is people coming in from elsewhere yeah
13:08yeah yeah exactly now i'm melting i'm absolutely melting the romans would have had awnings
13:14so there you go civilization has regressed i think
13:44i've seen the stunning maison carré
13:47and climbed inside les arennes but this area has more to offer
13:56i'm now heading 15 miles north to see a spectacular example of roman engineering
14:05the pont du gard is an aqueduct from the first century ce
14:13lauren welcome bonjour this is incredible yeah i mean i've obviously seen it in photographs
14:22and then you come here this bridge is quite amazing there is only one in the world here this
14:29amazing bridge is in fact just here to get the water in the city that's all yeah
14:36how long is the entire aqueduct how long is the route that it has to take from source to neem
14:41source and neem uh in the in at the arable tank where the water is distributed in the city
14:46you have uh 50 kilometers long and it's not it's not running straight from the source today no
14:53because in straight line they have to create uh through the hill behind me they have to create a long
15:00and deep tunnel too difficult for them though they prefer to create the aqueduct with a curve around
15:05hill so uh they explain why this aqueduct is uh 50 long kilometers and not uh 20 as
15:11maybe expected at the beginning so long where's the water coming from that's crossing this app
15:16um the water come from uh place named today users little city a few kilometers from here and the
15:22advantage of the spring and users started the level of these springs are is a little bit higher than neem
15:28how much higher uh 12 meters so the water is running 50 kilometers and it's only dropping 12 meters
15:35from source to destination very light they can get enough water every day in neem for 20 000 people
15:44once again 400 liters of water yeah yeah constantly it's constantly flowing in and then that's going
15:50through lead pipes into the fountains around the town so the whole town has access to fresh water
15:56yeah yeah that was modern people was happy yeah i don't have to pay the water was free how long
16:03do you
16:03think it took to build this all the way from the source to uh to build the aqueduct between the
16:08spring
16:09and the city during 20 years that's uh yeah that's okay that's estimated estimate here yeah uh they
16:16build this bridge in just maybe five years the stone here are the same than the roman time that's the
16:21same amazing it's amazing that it survived all that time in fact uh because it's far from the city
16:27and too heavy to destroy yeah so yeah because a lot of roman monuments uh you see you see that
16:35people
16:35have used them as a quarry because it's beautiful dressed stone you can take it when the in fact
16:41when you build this it's because you need it yeah and when you don't need it anymore you transform it
16:46and stone to build your house yeah because you need your house not this pile of stone but as you
16:51say
16:51this is far enough away from the city not to be used as a quarry so it just stayed here
16:55in the landscape
16:57it's incredible it was lucky and really well built yeah i mean really well built and now it's uh a
17:03world
17:04heritage of yeah and now if you want we can climb these steps to go to the aqueduct i definitely
17:11want
17:11to go to the top the pont du gard stands almost 50 meters tall and it's the very top level
17:18that carried
17:19the water which would flow through tunnels and bridges all the way to neem it was built around 50
17:26ce and in full use for 400 years oh it's with me careful with your heart the wind blow absolutely
17:38so this is the actual water channel yeah the water was here and the water live on the wall
17:45the stone you see on each side so all of this this is this is not actually part of the
17:50construction
17:50it's the deposit so this is water flowing through limestone dissolving it and then re-depositing it
17:57here yeah that the water was coming by this side and going to neem on the other side and leave
18:01every
18:01year few millimeters of stone on the wall yeah and millimeters after millimeters the canal reduce
18:08yeah so gradually it gets narrower and narrower this channel at the end the passage was quite
18:12narrow are 40 centimeters yeah and the level of the water was just under the ceiling but progressively
18:20it was too hard to maintain yeah uh so they they stop so they're not maintaining it and it's just
18:28gradually narrowing every year getting narrower and narrower it gets really narrow here oh yeah it's the
18:38uh most at the part the the most narrow on the channel yeah it was preserved to show that it
18:45was
18:46like this at the end of the yeah i mean it's really interesting to see it isn't it
18:52this upper section spans 360 meters across the valley of the river gardon below
18:59and despite many powerful floods the bridge has remained intact
19:07it's estimated that it weighs over 50 000 tons
19:16and we're out into the sunshine and on the other bank
19:21yeah it's the it's the right bank you have crossed the top of the bridge in the roman hakoduk
19:28when you look inside you cannot see the entrance
19:34no because the top is not in straight line the top is curved yeah
19:39do you know i didn't perceive that as we were walking through it in fact we don't know what's happened
19:45uh probably they build the bridge probably they build the bridge on the third on the three levels
19:53with a curve behind me and originally it was so that it was to protect the bridge from the fluid
20:01yes like yeah so it's basically an arch in this direction it's not constant it's not a perfect curve
20:09during a few years it was a possibility that because of the sun on the bridge the stone
20:16make i say dilatation and expanded expanded yeah expanded on the day retracting on the night yeah
20:23so maybe it was a pull that the bridge was curved because of this but there is another possibility
20:29and all in in the same uh there was an earthquake one day and the bridge is very high and
20:36the bridge
20:36move yeah and the top is a little bit curved so we don't have the exact reason of why the
20:44the top is
20:45curved but yeah it's a mix with all of this the pont du gard is the most incredible site but
20:55this is a
20:55mere section of a 50 kilometer journey the water would have made from the source to the city the bridge
21:04museum has a beautiful model of the entire length i do love a good model in a museum and this
21:12one
21:12is brilliant because it shows you something of the scale of this massive roman infrastructure project
21:18it starts at modern day users where the water is gathered from springs and then from here it's going
21:26to travel 50 kilometers to neem not in a straight line and sometimes that's going to be in tunnels
21:33which are going around a corner and so you can see the the tunnel disappearing off there as it's running
21:39along this convoluted route all the time it's having to drop slightly to keep that water flowing
21:46to keep it heading towards neem over another bridge and a little one here with just three arches
21:54crossing a small valley here's another big bridge taking it across a valley and this is not so well
22:01preserved today and sometimes these tunnels are emerging and they're still tunnels they're still
22:09covered over but they're leaping into the air traveling over valleys on these little bridges that
22:16one's just got three arches so is this one and as we come into the pont du gard this incredibly
22:23well
22:23preserved bit of the aqueduct with these three tiers of arches and i was walking along
22:30up inside there with laurent through the tunnels that the water would have flowed along
22:39and then finally we arrive at neem this is where all that water ends up and this is called the
22:46castellum
22:47which was discovered excavated in the 19th century this is where the aqueduct finishes and is essentially
22:53a reservoir in neem where the water is flowing in from this very long aqueduct and that water has dropped
23:04only 12 meters to get it to this point it's quite incredible i'm blown away by that
23:09and then actually this castellum which is gathering all that water is at a high point in neem
23:16eight meters above the rest of the city so now the water is flowing out at quite high pressure
23:22to the fountains in the streets just as they were in pompeii
23:30what an extraordinary example of the roman world neem is but my time here is coming to an end tomorrow
23:38i'm taking the train to narbonne to discover among other treasures a roman aristocrats luxury villa
23:59i'm leaving neem to head southwest to narbonne founded by the romans in 118 bce
24:11it's a pleasant 90-mile train journey through the french countryside
24:16a lot quicker than walking on foot or even on horseback along the via domitia
24:43in the second to last decade of the second century bce rome was extending its control and its influence
24:51into southern gaul and this was done by the general domitius he built a road of course which ran all
25:00the way from the alps to spain and it brought his name the via domitia as this road got close
25:07to the
25:08foothills of the pyrenees there was already a settlement there known as narrow by the locals
25:13and it became known as narbo by the romans domitius placed a garrison there in order to guard
25:20the road that he was making and over time that garrison grew into a prosperous town and it was known
25:29at the time as a place where roman identity and non-roman barbarian identity
25:36was fused together something that was playing out across the empire
25:43so
26:08as a roman city
26:12narbonne would be transformed into the wealthiest settlement in southern gaul
26:21it was known for its sophisticated urban life and its wine
26:27but compared with nime you have to look much harder for traces of that roman heritage here
26:33it is the roman road
26:43it is the roman road
26:58coming from the alps and then tracing along here down to nime and down to narbonne i've been following
27:06it very closely again on the train journey it continues down south into spain
27:16it's just a window into the past in the middle of the town square this is
27:21the via domitia that i'm standing on and once again i can see the ruts the wheel ruts in the
27:26roads
27:28i'm not having to cycle along at this time
27:37i'm heading just north of the city center to a significant roman archaeological site
27:43close to the lombard
27:51excavations here have revealed two huge roman houses complete with thermal baths
27:58built in the first century bce these houses were occupied for 400 years
28:06i'm meeting anika a local guide who's been a volunteer here for over 12 years
28:16so that's just that's some house isn't it some house it's a wealthy house really yeah yeah for
28:25wealthy people let's have a look shall we where do we go in here yes please the garden
28:32so straight through the entrance what's this a well yes
28:37oh well because of course they settled here because there was water and this is a pond in
28:43the middle of the garden is it yeah beautiful pond we can we can still put water you know it's
28:50perfectly perfectly right so this is the original roman cement is it yes on the outside it's what we
28:58call the roman concrete yes completely waterproof would they have had fish do you think fish yes
29:04yeah yes they had fish but it's it's more for pleasure okay we can imagine the kids having having
29:11a swim yeah yes because it is a family house yes i would like to have a swim today it's
29:15baking isn't
29:16it where do we go next then annie we're going to see the rooms where the family sit okay for
29:23talking
29:23and and the children have a family like a sitting room we call it the sitting room this is the
29:30sitting
29:31room yeah and when this was excavated originally what presumably there were lots of artifacts that
29:36were discovered here as well amazing mosaics it was taken out and it's now in the museum and you
29:44will see the beautiful paintings when was all this excavated it was it was found in 1973 the government
29:52wanting to build in narbonne a big tax building okay and so they dig and the artifacts that were removed
30:00from the ground were all really good quality high status yeah exactly and now all the paintings
30:08which have been restored you will see them in the museum in the museum yeah we have the name of
30:15the
30:16the owner of the house we found an altar an altar uh with his name and what is his name
30:25marcus
30:26claudius claudius i still so we've got this name inscribed on an altar yes uh is he mentioned anywhere
30:34else in are there any mentions in literature not literature but his name was engraved in in some of
30:42the stone his name was twin with trade okay it's lovely to have a name though it's unusual yes yeah
30:50are you
30:51proud of your roman heritage here definitely part of your identity oh definitely yeah yes oh it's been
30:57a lovely tour thank you very much i want to go look i want to look at all the artifacts
31:01now so i must go
31:01to the museum mustn't i oh yes yeah you will be in love with the paintings there it shows that
31:09these
31:09people not only they had money but they had culture and taste yeah it's great to come and see the
31:16actual
31:17excavations before i go to the museum yes it's nice to be able to put it into context it's the
31:22way you
31:23should do it yeah in roman times narbonne was the capital of the province of gallia narbonensis
31:30covering much of what's now southern france
31:36claus de la lombard lies in an area reserved for narbonne's elite
31:42clearly the city had serious wealth and i'm hoping to see the treasures that were unearthed from
31:48these excavations
31:55this is an incredible display yes it is wow yeah main attraction of our museum i mean you just walk
32:03in
32:03and you're confronted with it yeah roman narbonne that's the idea yeah because all the city has lost
32:08all its monuments so we wanted to recreate this monumentality and that's how we we did it so where
32:16did these come from they look as though they've come from lots of different places um in fact we found
32:22them in the city walls in the 19th century because they were used as um construction materials materials
32:29but we think they were originally taken from funerary monuments okay when the city needed to protect
32:36itself at the end of the roman period yeah and we think that the inhabitants did destroyed these
32:43monuments and constructed the first city walls with all these blocks okay do you know which century
32:48that was we're not exactly sure i think it's the third or fourth century ad there are bits that look
32:54as though they're freezes that's right you have some fraction up there which looks like it might be
32:59that's right the one that's right the one have just in front of us is a freeze that may come
33:06from
33:06a public uh monument this beautiful one here with the beautiful leaves that's right it looks very
33:12much like the one the freeze you have in the maison carrée in nîmes so we think it's a temple
33:19of the same
33:19kind okay but unfortunately uh we'll only have 12 blocks of this kind so the yeah we're not exactly sure
33:26where
33:26the car it was in the city the rest of it is gone that's right that's right how many blocks
33:31there are
33:32here in so in this wall you have 760 blocks wow and we still have some other ones in the
33:37storage rooms
33:38yeah uh quite a lot because we have 500 more and we'll try to change from time to time there
33:44is a
33:44machine and you can see just behind us the here what's that doing it's it moves the stones so if
33:51you
33:51want to take one out of the wall yes it does it's basically a forklift robot that's right yeah yeah
33:59now i've visited the excavations at the close to the lombard yes and you've got the artifacts here
34:05haven't you right yes we are showing the wall paintings and a lot of objects that were discovered
34:11yeah can i see these yes yes let's go it's just right there
34:21so this is where we're showing the a lot of paintings it comes from le claude la lombarde
34:27we try to rebuild some rooms with the full decoration the floor the walls and sometimes the ceiling
34:35in context that's nice right for these two rooms it's in full context the other one it's only a
34:40melting of different rooms yeah but we try to show as much as possible oh this is a fantastic way
34:46of
34:46displaying it you have the decoration of a something like a room um a bedroom we think this one is
34:55quite
34:55huge it's impressive because it's very very high yes it's four meters high and they were covered with
35:01that all these paintings some rich paintings you can see a woman standing here but this must have
35:07all been collapsed right in that's right in fact it collapsed at the end of a roman time and the
35:14archaeologists discovered all these fragments um 40 years ago so this is all pieced together from
35:21fragments that have been excavated out of this tumbled down building which has been covered up yeah
35:25really huge work enormous work amazing they've got it easy at pompeii yes where they just take away the
35:31stone and the ash and the walls are still standing there's no puzzle at all here it's had to all
35:36be pieced back together that's extraordinary here you have only a fragment of um we think it's a
35:42mythological episode with uh so there's a man here with two horses that's right and we think it's the
35:49chariot of the sun and there's a mythological episode about this when phoebus you know wants to
35:56use this chariot so that could be phoebus with the horses of the chariot of the south yeah that's
36:01right yes oh those fragments are lovely yes unfortunately yeah leaves this one is more incomplete
36:11but you can still recognize the fruits yeah oh look at this bone comb that's beautiful and a tiny comb
36:18yes i don't think i've ever seen such a tiny comb and this is one of the most famous paintings
36:25of
36:25narbonne yes it represents a genius a god which is the genius of the roman people just next to the
36:34victory so kind of the personification of that's right yeah and the big tree was holding a helmet or
36:43maybe a shield and above her head oh yeah all the upper part has disappeared but this kind of
36:50decoration is quite rare you don't often see men and women represented at real size so this is why
36:57that's why this painting is famous and he's got a cornucopia that's right yes with grapes hanging
37:05down from it and uh ears of wheat springing from the top yes that's right yeah that's wonderful
37:16beautiful roman glass
37:20so there are clearly extremely wealthy people here in yes where did their wealth come from trading trading
37:27most mostly agriculture wine these were the two main sources of wealth and being on that road between
37:35you know italy and spain yes yeah what a grand sight those two villas must have been
37:44tomorrow i'm crossing the border for my first encounter with hispania roman spain
38:15i'm now going to leave gaul france behind and i'm traveling towards hispania spain on this train
38:24and i'm going to be exploring the very ancient city of emporion now this was founded by greeks who had
38:32a
38:33colony at massalia marseille and then they founded this other town as a hub for trade
38:41they called it emporion after all and it was a really thriving important prosperous town it became romanized
38:51because of its connections with the italian peninsula it ended up siding with rome in the punic wars
38:57against hannibal and the carthaginians and was rewarded for that by continuing to be an independent
39:03city-state but in fact by that point by the second century bce its harbor was silting up and it
39:11was going into decline
39:17emporion emporion is known today as emporios it sits on the mediterranean coast just 50 miles from the french border
39:32my next stop is figueras villafont and from there it's a short journey to the roman remains at empurios
39:44the catalan town of fugueros is famously known as the birthplace of salvador dali
39:56i'm meeting elisa an archaeologist who's been working at this site for the past 10 years elisa hi
40:06buenos dias hola buenos dias these mosaics are absolutely stunning it uh it's part of a big
40:13domos a big house yeah where they are leaving important people from this city from the roman
40:19city of empurias so how big is this house it's all of these mosaics are part of one house are
40:25they
40:25this three thousand meter careers there are many others uh big house in this city this city is to uh
40:3322 hectares of city okay but now we only know uh 50 20 percent of the city yeah can we
40:41walk around
40:42this house and look at some of these other mosaics in a bit more detail they're they're really lovely
40:46aren't they and you just get the impression of mosaic artisans you know moving around the empire
40:53yeah they come here directly from italy yeah and also the materials come from italy yeah they have
41:01found in some boats that are under the water with part of mosaics because some parts of the mosaics
41:08the emblemata the the center part of the mosaic usually are do it in a outside the town not in
41:15the
41:15place yeah because they're probably made by the best crafts people as well um and they're not going to
41:22travel they're going to make them in situ and then they export them out yeah yeah they send it by
41:28by boat here yeah it's interesting isn't it because you think about globalization again as a as a new
41:32thing and the idea that you know a particular um big company can export a style around like it's like
41:39china uh now with the exportation of the similar products
41:46of the rome of the rome of the rome of the rome of the rome as a military base in
41:53their battles against
41:54the carthaginians so there's more archaeology down here is this more of the roman town
42:03yeah this city that we can see now it's a greek city okay so the greeks were here before the
42:12romans
42:12when did they first start to build a city here they arrived in the sixth century before christ yeah
42:19they arrived here because they are in an expansive uh trading system in the mediterranean
42:25the emporion means yes it's a market then later roman arrives yeah roman uh create the camp outside
42:37this greek city oh i see so actually these so the greek city and the roman city for a period
42:42are contemporaneous yes when the city roman city was completely built greek cities started to be a
42:49bad room and during the first century after christ we can see that all the buildings yeah started to be
42:55abandoned yeah yeah and in terms of the excavations here then i mean you've got a beautifully preserved
43:02greek and and roman city and you can see the plan of it you can see the layout of it
43:07it's extraordinary
43:09and you and you're looking yeah we are still digging so can i see some of your recent finds in
43:14the
43:15yes of course yeah yeah some of our work you can find it there i have to check it out
43:20thank you
43:26the finds here span almost a millennium of history there are artworks dating to the earlier greek city
43:35through the later centuries of the roman republic and then on into the time of empire
43:42new york
43:47oh
43:48they're gorgeous
43:53mosaics made out of the tiniest tiniest tessari and so many different colors
44:04ah see these are from the big house the big house that i was looking at with elisa and there
44:11were
44:11those lovely mosaic floors with the geometric designs on them but they pale into insignificance
44:21almost beside these beautiful figurative mosaics so detailed wow i mean this is consummate artistry
44:36somebody incredibly importioned and wealthy lived in that house
44:42and here we see something which is coming in at the end of the imperial period in the west
44:49and which will survive the fragmentation of the empire there are the greek letters chi
44:58and rho looking like a p the first two letters of christos in greek
45:07and an alpha and an omega for the beginning and the end this is christianity
45:18empurios was built for the import and export of goods established by the greeks then run by the
45:24carthaginians before the romans moved in but this wasn't just a fight over a few trading outposts
45:32the battle between the romans and the carthaginians
45:35was about who would dominate in the western mediterranean and only one empire would win
45:46join me next time as i travel further into spain i mean we're practically on the beach
45:52to discover how the romans flushed their cash so imagine if the toe was like this the food would be
45:59something like this it's enormous and find more secrets to the success of the roman empire look at
46:09that this is the moment of wow
46:13so
46:24so
46:25so
46:41Transcription by CastingWords
Comments