Roman Barcino (Field Trip)

The first field trip we went on as a class was to the old Roman city, originally named Barcino by the Romans.  The old city is located just down the block from our CEA Global Campus if you take Via Laietana.  Today, the area is packed with shops, restaurants, tapas bars and tourists, in addition to business men that work in some of the office buildings.  But nearly two thousand years ago, the city was quite different.  At first, the city was built as a colony for soldiers.  But as construction continued, the city grew commercially and economically as well.  The Roman city was set up like a military camp with the forum, or “la caixa,” serving as the central meeting place of the city.  The forum was located at the intersection of the two main roads: the north-south Cardus Maaximus, and the east-west Decumanus Maximus.  At the forum would be the Roman city’s church, government, schools, bathhouse and other important things.

Two of the sites on this field trip I particularly enjoyed the most were the Cathedral of the Holy Cross and Saint Eulalia and the Temple of Augustus.   The Cathedral is a post-Roman construction, being built from the 13^th to 15^th centuries.  The neo-Gothic façade blew my mind the first time I saw it.  Churches with this amount of detail are absent in the United States, and the Barcelona Cathedral was nothing compared to churches I would see throughout the rest of my semester on my travels.  The Temple of Augustus, on the other hand, was around when the Romans were.  The temple was a worshipping place for the Emperor Augustus, and today, three pillars remain.  It blew my mind how these pillars are still able to stand after thousands of years.  They were able to construct huge columns without any of the tools present today.  It says a lot about the Roman’s (and humans in general) ingenuity.