The Mausoleums of Galician Door
Studied for several excavation campaigns in the nineties of the last century
, Funerary Monuments of Galician Door are the two most important funerary monuments of the roman Córdoba. Their dimensions are 13 meters of diameter. They are situated next to the Roman Street that linked the city since the Republican period, the Corduba-Hispalis, the right bank of the Guadalquivir. The road forks into two branches, one of which, the old Almodovar Old Path was one of the most important areas for burial of the city.
The monument was built at the age of Augustus: it was composed by an ustrinum (site where the bodies are burnt) and a zone where the
bodies are put, and an area separated from the previous deposition funeral for a low wall, to build a device that has interesting parallels in other cities Béticas as Baelo Claudia. This was situated towards the Decumanus Maximus, near there was a bridge and also the walls were renewed.
In the Tiberio’s period a lot of funerary monuments were built. Its structure was alike to the others, but different functionality. The north, which has a better state of preservation, rose above respecting the burial, which inclines us to think of a family relationship with regard to the recipients of both complexes
, while maintaining their individual character, while the location to the south seems to have been conceived as a collective burial possibly to house the remains of members of the family of the deceased's first building.
As for his typology is its direct italian tradition, even if there are exact parallels in the funerary architecture hispanic. Formally resemble other monuments found in Carmona, Alcalá de Guadaira, Mérida, and perhaps the town of Les Gunyoles of Tarragona. The dissemination of this type
of monument cylindrical finds its raison in the importance of a monument reached the Mausoleum of the Emperor Augustus. In this way, the existence of these magnificent buildings is further evidence that Colonia Patricia was a faithful reflection of the capital, Rome, within a process of ideological and iconographic transmission almost unique in the rest of Roman Spain.
It sems that these buildings were related to the ordo equester one of the most important sector of the society. They are also situated next to the main streets of the city, which abounds even more is the importance that we must give as part of the society of the Roman Córdoba.
Construction techniques show a persistence of traditional
techniques in architecture, as is the use of opus quadratum or "stone of mine," but at the same time import the new flows of roman architecture and the use of opus caementitium and marble.
The funerary monuments had not a long life in fact, new buildings were built very closely and enlarging themselves beyond the city walls, because at the end of the s. II A.D. funeral area is literally invaded by domestic and commercial buildings belonging to one of the neighborhoods that had emerged outside the city at the same moment in which such roadway is removed and lifts.
Text: Fran Peña.
Traslated by Sara Moretti
Art, Culture and Tourism in Cordoba