April 15, 2010 -- The Road to Cordoba

When leaving Sevilla we decided to travel via a secondary road north of the river and visit a heritage site along the way to Cordoba.
Italica was an exten- sive Roman town, built on the then navig- able river in 206 BC. It burgeoned as a military and cultural centre and was the birthplace of Emperor Trajan and his successor, Hadrian. In Hadrian's reign the city received considerable largess in the form of civic buildings and marble temples, public baths, an impressive waterworks, etc.

While the whole site has not been unearth- ed, it was well planned, with wide streets, good solid foundations for buildings, extensive floors covered in mosaics, and an amphitheatre built to hold 25,000 spectators.

Like almost all Roman sites, it has been cannibal- ized over the centuries and is mostly devoid of any marble or even building stones. For the most part only the foundations remain with some marble pillars here and there. No reconstruction has been undertaken and most artifacts are held in the museum in Seville.

The second site was found serendipitously - we came around a corner and there it was - the Castillo de Almodovar. We spent a pleasant couple of hours in a very romantic setting. What is impres- sive about this castle is that it was restored over a thirty year period in the early twentieth century by a private nobleman who inherited the property. We took lots of photos, met a couple of Aussies, and were on our way.

On to Cordoba to find our hotel/apartment on a narrow one way street very close to the historic area. Our bedroom was at street level on a major pedestrian thoroughfare, cobblestoned of course, so we were kept awake by drunken passersby until well after midnight.