SEGÓBRIGA (R)

It is a Roman site of great importance because it has not been subsequently modified by superimposed constructions and because the surrounding landscape has also remained practically intact.

Around the year 50 B.C. an embassy was sent to Rome to pay homage and appointL as patron. Livius l. fOcella, grandfather of Emperor Galba, who minted a coin with the legend  It obtained the category of when it already had an urban structure delimited by a wall, with an orthogonal layout and an area of 10 and a half hectares. Within the city there were already several residential neighborhoods, a temple and the theater hot springs.

During the time of Augustus, new monumental buildings were built, such as the forum or the public square, and at the end of the 1st century AD. It had a theater, an amphitheater, new thermal baths, a building dedicated to commercial transactions, a large porticoed plaza around the old temple, as well as infrastructure such as an aqueduct to carry drinking water, paved streets and fountains. In the middle of the 2nd century, the construction of a circus was carried out.

Outside the city walls, the remains of the aqueduct have been located, a 4 km long lead pipe. long on a concrete channel, which supplied water to the fountains and hot springs; We also find the necropolis, around a Visigoth basilica, with burials in wooden coffins in marked graves covered by stone slabs. Some of the tombs contained grave goods. And finally the circus, which preserves the remains of 6 carceres or starting blocks and large stretches of side stands with the authorities’ and judges’ tribunes. When the circus was excavated, a necropolis was found from between the 1st and 2nd centuries, with cremations in ceramic urns as the main ritual and nearly two hundred inscriptions, especially steles, which show the origin of some of those buried there, slaves and freedmen. Greeks.

It was losing importance with the loss of the local senate and the consolidation of Christianity. It was thus transformed in the Visigoth era, although it continued to be an episcopal seat and its bishops attended the councils of Toledo. In the Islamic era it became a rural center dependent on Uclés. In 1228 a document donating part of the hill to the Order of Santiago attests to its existence, although with the name Cabeza de Griego. At the end of the Middle Ages the population moved definitively to the new center of Sanfelices, current Saelices.

Elena Cardenal for URBS REGIA

Abascal, J.M. – Alberola, A. – Cebrián, R. – Hortelano, I., 2010:  Segobriga 2009. Resumen de las intervenciones arqueológicas, Cuenca. Martín Almagro-Gorbea, M. – y Abascal, J.M., 1999: Segóbriga y su conjunto arqueológico, Real Academia de la Historia y Junta de Comunidades de Castilla-La Mancha.