Explorer Mérida

The Roman Amphitheatre of Mérida opened in 8 BC beside the theatre and staged gladiator fights and animal hunts for around 15,000 spectators. Visitors walk around the elliptical arena, 64 by 44 metres, with the large pit dug in its centre, the tiers of seating and the two tribunes at either end of the short axis.

The Roman Theatre of Mérida was built in 16–15 BC at the initiative of Marcus Agrippa in the colony of Emerita Augusta and seated about 6,000 people. Its two-storey stage front of marble columns and statues dates from a rebuilding around the end of the 1st century AD, and since 1933 the theatre has hosted the International Festival of Classical Theatre.

The National Museum of Roman Art in Mérida displays finds from the Roman city of Emerita Augusta: sculpture, mosaics, wall paintings, coins and objects of daily life. Founded in 1838 and refounded under its present name in 1975, it occupies a brick building by Rafael Moneo opened in 1986, with a central nave of tall arches and a crypt over excavated Roman remains.

The Alcazaba of Mérida is a fortress built in 835 by the emir Abd al-Rahman II to guard the Roman bridge over the Guadiana and control the city. Its square walls, about 550 metres around with 25 towers, reuse Roman and Visigothic stone; inside are an underground cistern, a stretch of Roman street and excavated houses.

The Roman Bridge of Mérida crosses the Guadiana River on 60 arches over a length of about 790 metres. Built when the colony of Emerita Augusta was founded, it was repaired in 686 and again in 1610, and part of it was blown up in 1812. Since the early 1990s it has been open only to people on foot, with the Alcazaba at its city end.

The Acueducto de los Milagros is a 1st-century AD Roman aqueduct that brought water from the Proserpina reservoir into Emerita Augusta. A stretch of about 830 metres still crosses the Albarregas valley, with 38 piers of granite and red brick linked by arches up to 25 metres high; later residents named it the aqueduct 'of the Miracles'.