ARCHIVED - Work to resume on excavations of Roman Ampitheatre in Cartagena

The site is being cleared of scrub and rubbish yet again

The stop-start process of excavating the Roman Ampitheatre which lies buried beneath the old bull ring in Cartagena is to resume again and council workers have begun with a big clean-up of the site, removing the accumulated rubbish and weeds which have made the site such an eyesore for the last few months.

The oval-shaped Roman amphitheatre in Cartagena was built on the eastern side of the Cerro de la Concepción hill during the Flavian dynasty, which lasted from 69 to 96 AD, and is believed to have held up to 11,000 spectators. In 1854 the city’s bull ring was built on top of its remains, although nowadays the arena itself is in a state of semi-ruin and partial demolition work began in 2008.

The huge amphitheatre still lies almost completely buried, and little progress has been made towards unearthing it, and making it a major tourist attraction, with lack of money always being the main stumbling block.

The Roman Ampitheatre was first recorded nearly 120 years ago, but was re-examined when exploratory works relating to the condition of the bull ring took place, revealing that far from being little more than a ruin as had originally been believed, was in fact virtually intact beneath the more modern construction of the bull ring which had been built directly over the top of it.

Since then there have been a variety of ideas put forward as to how best to exploit the monument and whether the bull ring should be demolished completely in order to open-up the Ampithetare or whether to treat it as an extension of the monument and incorporate it into a new structure. At one point, during the period in which Pedro Cruz was regional culture and tourism minister, plans to convert the whole site into an 11 million euro modern art museum were put forward, but these have now been shelved in favour of a more practical plan which can be supported financially.

In 2016 an agreement was signed between the Mayor of Cartagena and the president of the regional government of Murcia to re-assign responsibilities regarding the excavation, the implication of this agreement being that the Town Hall could take charge of seeking finance for the excavation project and 300,000 euros was allocated for the initial works.

Now the Town Hall is ready to resume phase II of the Roman Amphitheater project, which corresponds to the south quadrant and will allow the recovery of the maritime facade of the site.

Cleaning, clearing and conditioning work of both the interior and exterior areas has been carried out, so that the works can begin. The council has budgeted 330,578 euros for this project, to which must be added the 4,322 euros for cleaning and the 3,129 euros for the archaeological supervision contract .

Visits in small groups
The council plans to offer visits in very small groups, due to the mandatory limitations of the coronavirus situation, enabling visitors to see the works in progress.

Click for the full history of Cartagena or click here for information about the monuments which can be visited in the city.