A few days ago we went to the Museo de Historia de la Ciudad, which means the Museum of History of the City (of Barcelona). The museum is in the Barrri Gotti district. It is in the building that used to be the Palace of the Inquisition, but they never talk about that... We got up really late, had breakfast, and went straight to the museum. It was almost noon by the time we got there. We got audiotour speakers and started the tour.
In the first room there were Visigoth sculptures from the old cathedral. The Visigoths were barbarians that invaded Spain after the Romans. The second room also had old Roman sculptures and artifacts. The third room had artifacts from the Celtiberian and Roman times, and had an old iron chariot wheel from the Celtiberian times before the Romans.
Then we went underground, which is where a lot of the old Roman city is. The excavated the old Roman city underneath the rest of the existing buildings, for example the cathedral, and then they opened it up as a museum. First we saw the old fortress walls and we were able to go into one of the thirty six towers. Then we walked into a street that was between the fortress wall and the houses. Then we saw a big laundry place, and a place where they dyed clothes. One disgusting thing was to dye clothes they sometimes used urine. Then we saw a garum factory. Garum is a kind a fish sauce that was very expensive in Rome. Then we saw a place that dried fish and sold them.
Then we saw an old Roman house. Roman houses had a big area with columns and a fountain called a peristyle that was a very big room. In the center of the house was the atrium which was like a big living room that had all the other rooms going off of it. Next we went to an old Roman church shaped like a cross. They showed a video of how the church was built. Then we saw a huge place where the Romans made wine. There were big bowls that were half way into the ground,and where they put flavors in with the wines, to mix them. There was also a big press that spun around to mash the grapes.
After that we saw a little wood model of the whole Roman city, with a model for each house, and it showed the wharves and some ships too. My brother wanted to play with it very badly, but here was a woman who was hogging it... There were a lot of other rooms, but it was closing so we had to leave without seeing all. The last thing we saw was a small chapel that was not very good because it had almost nothing in it and the things it did have looked really ugly.
I think it was really cool to go underground and see a whole part of the old city.
2 comments:
I think it's so neat that certain places still have remains of old cities underground. It's strange to think there are cities underground and we're walking on top of them. Was it really cool (cold, not exciting) underground like it was in Nero's Palace? The model of the city sounds interesting; too bad K didn't get a chance to play with it!
Sorry i'm answering so late. It was really fun going underground (in other words it was heated and had pretty interesting things). The model was really cool! Even I wanted to mess around with it. But still, it is too bad that K didn't get to play with it. It would be interesting to see what he would do with it.
Post a Comment