Extremadura Guide Eng 2016

After serious difficulties and bloody fights against Veton and Lusitanian people, where the famous Viriato would stand out in the middle of this century, Roma would expand its dominations to the lands in the north of Tajo river and founded a new province in Hispania, Lusi- tania, whose capital would be Emerita Augusta , the cur- rent Mérida. A historical-artistic legacy, as wide as important, dates back to this long period of cultural, economic, military set- tlement: theatres, amphitheatres, temples, bridges, aque- ducts, dams, hot baths, funeral monuments, paved roads like the famous “Vía de la Plata” , a Roman route that linked the lands of Itálica, passing by Emerita and which goes in this region from Monesterio in the south of Extremadura that borders on Andalusia, to Baños de Mon- temayor, close to the nearby lands of Castilla y León. The provincial museums of Cáceres and Badajoz , and over all, the National Museum of Roman Art of Mérida offers the chance of knowing numerous archaeological pieces of work dated back to this time among the numer- ous ones preserved for visitants and researchers to enjoy themselves. The Visigothic lands of Extremadura and particularly of Mérida would turn it into a strategic centre of the Visig- othic Hispania since 469 and in an important focus, not only political and religious, but also artistic. There are interesting, artistic examples with clear Roman-Christian influences and beautiful Byzantine, Oriental, African shapes appeared, and at the same time they marked the rest of the Visigothic Spanish reign stylistically and also known as Hispanic-Visigothic art.

Dolmen of Valencia de Alcántara

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Roman Museum. Mérida

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