FIELD TRIP TO THE OLD ROMAN CITY

Last week we went on a field trip to the Old Roman City in Barcelona.  I am glad that we got to take this trip with my class, because I honestly do not know if I would have ever known about the old city walls of Barcelona.  I am currently enrolled in Barcelona Past & Present, a class that takes a look at Barcelona starting with the Romans and brings us up to the present.  My teacher, Xavier Alcon, really has a passion for talking about the material.  When taking us on the field trip, we met outside the metro stop Jaume I, and we walked around before looking at the old columns.  The area surrounding the old Roman city really has a lot of history, because today it is not very commercialized like the rest of Barcelona.  There are still the narrow streets, small shops for tapas and Catalan food, as well as, an old bakery.  It was also fashion week when we were on our field trip, so it was exciting for me to see them setting up for the shows outside!

When we walked into the area that contained the columns, I was surprised by how well in tact the columns were.  I stared up at the columns, and could not believe that they have been there for thousands, and thousands of years.  I included a picture that I snapped on my phone of the columns, so enjoy!

After looking at the columns, we then went down into a museum that contained the walls to the old Roman city.  We learned that the Roman symbol was a cross and that this was how they constructed their towns.  It was Christianity that adapted this symbol to be its own for their religion.  (Also something I never learned in any of my religion or history classes).

We took an elevator down into the Roman city and saw the remains of what once was a city thousands of years ago.  I think that we can all agree that the Romans were good engineers because everything is kept in tact so well.  They were even smart enough to know how to keep the clean water separate from the dirty water.  Another thing that the Roman's did was public baths.  I do not think that this would have been okay in today's culture, as we view privacy very differently than the Roman's did.

We ended our tour of the Roman city with the wine area.  Bacchus, the Roman god of wine, was word we learned on our tour.  The Romans had huge basins in their cities where they made the wine.  The city was very well thought out and had a clear system and order to it.

This past weekend, my friends and I returned to the Gothic area of Barcelona to visit the Jewish quarter. I cannot wait to go back to this on a field trip, because I do not remember the Jewish quarter in the Gothic area of Barcelona.