BASÍLICA Y CONJUNTO DEL PARQUE CENTRAL DE TARRAGONA

Between 1994 and 1997, a very devastated paleo-Christian archaeological complex was excavated on the outskirts of Tarragona, right next to the large paleo-Christian necropolis located in the Tobacco Factory, to which it was linked or connected by an old suburban road. Thus, both sites could be considered a single group, renamed by the most recent research as Francolí Paleochristian Group. The topographical situation of the site outside the walls of the Roman city is significant, in a suburb where some villas and other buildings had already been established in imperial times, as well as part of the funerary area that surrounded the city. Later, during the second half of the 4th century, a residential villa or suburban domus was built on the site, a sector of which was reused as a necropolis once it fell into disuse.

The most significant structures in this site are the constructions carried out during Late Antiquity, among which is a Christian funerary temple built around the year 400 in operation until the second half of the 5th century. All these buildings are very devastated, but its plan has been completed thanks to the conservation of the foundations. It is, therefore, a complex made up of six buildings of indeterminate functionality ––but related to agricultural activities–– and presided over by a basilica with an atrium at the foot.

The interpretative hypotheses for this paleochristian group are basically two. The first ––and most accepted by its excavators–– defends the construction of a funerary basilica from the donation of a dominus, a construction that would be carried out right next to the spiritual center of the moment: the necropolis where the relics of the revered martyrs of the amphitheater. In this sense, we could speak of a basilica ad sanctos. The second hypothesis, which does not exclude the first, proposes that it was a monastery, a fact that would give a certain meaning to the rest of the buildings that make up the complex and that, perhaps, would explain the contrast between the mundane luxury of many tombs in the Tobacco Factory and the general austerity of the tombs of this other basilica ––absence of sarcophagi, sepulchral mosaics, etc., more in keeping with monastic austerity––. In short, the whole of the northern sector of Francolí is considered as a possible monastery ad sanctos with respect to the neighboring martyrdom basilica found in the Tobacco Factory and which would guard the relics of Fruitful, Omen and Eulogio. In this sense, the northern basilica, with the tombs of the community that guarded it, would form the largest of the mausoleums in the extensive early Christian necropolis of Francolí.

It should be noted that the Central Park archaeological complex was excavated, dismantled and is currently relocated to a lower level than its original discovery, in a space set up for this purpose, within the parking lot of a shopping center that receives the name of Central Park.

Jordina Sales-Carbonell for URBS REGIA

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-Puche, J. M. y López Vilar, J., 2008: “Forma i proporció en l’arquitectura paleocristiana. El cas de la basílica septentrional del Francolí de Tarragona”, Esglésies rurals a Catalunya entre l’Antiguitat i l’Edat Mitjana (segles V-X), AREDAT, Bologna, 23-40.
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