Merida, a World Heritage city, has just discovered another great hidden treasure from Roman times. In this case, the findings have been discovered in the House of the Amphitheatera site located next to the Theater and Amphitheatre, where a “huge” space for public baths has emerged in an “excellent” state, according to confirmed Félix Palma, director of the Monumental City Consortium.
The place of discovery is included in an archaeological zone that was originally located outside the walls of Augusta Emerita, specifically in an area where houses coexisted with funerary and industrial spaces and where two famous houses were located: the House of the Water Tower and the House of the Amphitheatre, dating from the end of the 1st century after Christ. The two buildings survived until the 3rd century. After their abandonment, at the beginning of the 4th century, a necropolis was located on them.
The Mérida Consortium launched three archaeological excavations in the area six months ago, which has led to this first finding, although investigations continue. At the moment, the “bathrooms of a house and also other dependencies” have appeared, explained Palma, who assured that “we are excavating the continuation of the Casa del Amphitheatre, whose limits are unknown, to complete its chronologybut the most important thing is that they have found some fantastic baths of a huge size for what is a normal Roman house”.
In fact, the archaeologist who directed the study, Ana María Bejarano, indicated that the ranch, due to its large dimensions, was probably used as a kind of “shelter” for residents. The initial project was intended to “excavate parts of the house that were not intervened and to be able to incorporate them into the visit with the result that we have found public baths that exceed what are private Roman baths in a normal house”.
In this sense, Bejarano stressed that the fundamental thing “is that the baths are perfectly preserved and all decorative systems have been found that hadwith its marble plaques, the moldings of the cornices, paintings that are preserved on the walls and there are also all the underground infrastructures”. At the moment, the pool that usually accompanies this type of dependencies has not been found in the excavated area, although it is not ruled out that it will be found in the future.