BASÍLICA DE ALCONÉTAR

The José María Oriol – Alcántara II reservoir extends across large territories and various municipal areas, among others, Garrovillas de Alconétar, a town located north of the city of Cáceres, between it and Plasencia. Currently the waters flood numerous archaeological remains of great cultural importance, among them the so-called basilica of Alconétar.

In 1969, on the occasion of the construction of the dam with a dike in Alcántara, archaeological excavations were carried out at the Alconétar site to discover the potential of the area.

The Alconétar bridge, today moved from its original location, was raised to overcome the Tagus River and allow the communication of the Roman road between Mérida and Astorga. To the right of the river, next to the bridge, it was located in the 1st century BC. C. the mansio called Turmulus. After the progressive abandonment of the road installation at the fall of the empire, a new location was sought for the settlement in a slightly higher position downstream.

A Christian religious building was built on the remains of an old abandoned villa between the end of the 5th century and the beginning of the 6th century. A baptismal space with several fonts and a series of auxiliary annexes was added to the basilica space later (7th century), a circumstance that led to the remodeling of the initial construction program, a fact perhaps related to the partial destruction of the building in Leovigild’s fights with the Swabian king Miro shortly after the capture of Cáceres (581-583) to control a space of singular strategic value for the dominion of Lusitania. Related to the religious space, a necropolis was set up in a building to the north of the basilica.

The early medieval buildings were destroyed in the 8th century, it is unknown whether they were due to the time of the Islamic conquest or the subsequent conflicts that gave rise to the establishment of the emirate capitalized from Córdoba.

The archaeological excavations carried out in 1969 around the Roman bridge (between it and the so-called Parador de la Magdalena) allowed the area to be recognized with a scientific perspective, and in the process two Christian cult buildings were documented at a shallow depth above ground level. erected on the abandoned levels of a Roman villa that must have been abandoned at the end of the 4th or beginning of the 5th century.

One of the buildings has a rectangular plan, it is oriented in an East – West direction; It is made up of three longitudinal naves. Without a doubt, the existing remains were interpreted as part of a Christian basilica. The documentation made it possible to establish two main construction phases, the second being a reform of the first. The result of the first phase generated a space 22 meters long and 13 meters wide. The headland area was very degraded, intuiting three possible rooms related to apse (hypothetically with a horseshoe-shaped plan), prosthesis and diaconicon< /i>. The second phase created a building 16.5 meters long and 10 meters wide, three naves separated by arches set on columns, the central nave being 4 meters wide and the lateral ones 3 meters wide. Towards the west, a small apse was arranged.

To the north are a series of rooms, considered chapels, in which two baptismal fonts were located in which baptism by immersion was practiced. The rectangular or navicular basins are made of brick, they have associated smaller basins, their orientation is East – West. On the smaller sides they have stairs made up of three steps. They are covered with reddish mortar with which each edge was rounded.

To the north of the basilica, the cemetery area was arranged in a closed rectangular area, where a total of 19 burials were located in simple graves excavated in the earthy substrate.

Victor Gibello for URBS REGIA

CABALLERO ZOREDA, L.: Alconétar en la Vía romana de la Plata. Garrovillas (Cáceres). Madrid, 1969.
ID.: ”Iglesia de Alconétar, Garrovillas”, Anejos del Archivo Español de Arqueología, XXIX (2003).

Garrovillas de Alconétar