Explorer Tarragone

The Praetorium is a Roman tower of the provincial forum, built in the 1st century AD to hold the stairs from the lower town through the circus up to the forum; in the Middle Ages it became the King's Castle. A passage leads from it into the vaulted corridors that carried the stands of the Roman circus, built for chariot races.

Tarragona Cathedral stands at the highest point of the old town, on a site once occupied by a Roman temple of the imperial cult. Begun around 1171 and consecrated in 1331, it marks the transition from Romanesque to Gothic, with a west front built around a large rose window and a 13th-century cloister with carved capitals.

Tarragona's Roman amphitheatre was built around the start of the 2nd century AD just outside Tarraco, beside the sea, for gladiator fights and animal hunts. In 259 Bishop Fructuosus and his deacons Augurius and Eulogius were burnt alive in its arena, and the ruins of a Visigothic basilica and the Romanesque church of Santa Maria del Miracle stand inside it.

The Roman walls of Tarragona were first raised in stone between about 217 and 197 BC, when Tarraco was still a military base, and later extended to enclose the whole town down to the port. The Passeig Arqueològic path runs along them past huge base blocks and three Roman towers: the Archbishop's, Cabiscol and Minerva towers.