History
Roman city of Segobriga
The archaeological site is one of the most important archaeological complexes on the Meseta. The monumentality of its excavated remains, where all the public buildings, essential references of Roman architecture, are present, has turned the site into one of the most important archaeological sites on the Segobriga It is a unique site for understanding the urban characteristics of this period, as there is no superimposed city of the present day. In addition, the surrounding landscape, which has remained practically intact since Roman times, helps to contextualise and understand the city, its space outside the walls and the territory.
History
At the southernmost point of Celtiberia is situated Segobriga on a hill called Cabeza de Griego, 858 m high and defended by the river Gigüela. From a castrum In the Iron Age, a Roman city arose in Celtiberian territory, whose main economic activity was linked to the exploitation of the lapis specularisThe site is a translucent plaster used as a window pane. Its privileged location at the crossroads of the land routes that linked the Ebro valley with the Baetica and Lusitania and the centre of the peninsula with the Valencian ports and, above all, with Carthago Nova The city became an important centre for trade with the Mediterranean, where materials and products of different origins arrived.
His name, Segobrigaremembered its mythical foundation by a character named Segowhose memory had been maintained by oral tradition since the unknown date on which it was constituted. It will be Pliny who will include Segobriga in their lists of stipendiary cities of the conventus Carthaginensisas caput Celtiberiaealong with other cities in the south of the Meseta and the south-east of the peninsula.
Around 50 BC, the Segobrigenses sent an embassy to Rome in order to pay homage and name the patron saint to L. Livius L.f. Ocellathe grandfather of the future Emperor Galba, and minted coinage with the legend Segobris. When the city became municipium The Roman city already had an urban structure delimited by a wall, with an orthogonal layout and a surface area of 10.5 ha. Several residential quarters, a temple and the thermal baths of the theatre formed part of the initial urban fabric of the city. Segobriga.
In the time of Emperor Augustus he obtained his legal promotion and began a programme of monumental constructions, the greatest exponent of which was the forum or public square. At the end of the 1st century AD. Segobriga had acquired the image of a Roman city. It had a theatre, an amphitheatre, a new baths, a building exclusively for commercial transactions and a large arcaded public square around the old temple, and had carried out important public works, such as the supply of drinking water through an aqueduct, the paving of the streets and the installation of fountains, among others, which improved urban life. With the construction of ex novo The construction of a circus in the middle of the 2nd century AD completed the programme of monumentalisation recognised by archaeological excavations in the city.
The loss of power of the local senate -ordo decurionum- and the progressive consolidation of Christianity and its church began the process of transformation into a late Antique city from the 4th and 5th centuries AD onwards. In the Visigothic period it was still an important city, as evidenced by its status as an episcopal see with bishops who attended the councils of Toledo. Throughout the Islamic period it gradually lost importance until it became a rural centre dependent on Uclés.
In 1228 the old SegobrigaNow known as Cabeza de Griego, it was still inhabited, as a document from that date is preserved which records the donation of part of the hill to the Order of Santiago. At the end of the Middle Ages it was abandoned for good, and the population was transferred to the new town of Sanfelices, Saelices today.
Ctra. Carrascosa de Campo a Villamayor de Santiago, s/n, E-16430 Saelices (Cuenca).
Telephone Interpretation Centre: 629 75 22 57
Mail: segobriga@dipucuenca.es
Credits:
Design and implementation: Tragsa Group. Contents: Rosario Cebrián Fernández (Lecturer in Archaeology at the UCM) with the collaboration of the Tragsa Group.
All content and images on this website are protected by copyright. Use without consent is prohibited.
