Via Augusta

The ''Via Augusta'' (also known as the ''Via Herculea'' or ''Via Exterior'') was the longest and busiest of the major roads built by the Romans in ancient Hispania (the Iberian Peninsula). According to historian Pierre Sillières, who has supervised excavation of Roman sites in Spain to identify the exact route followed by the Via Augusta, it was more a system of roads than a single road. Approximately long, the Via Augusta was built to link Spain with Italy, running from the interior city of ''Gades'' (Cádiz) to the Pyrenees Mountains along inland valleys parallel to the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. As the main axis of the road network in Roman Hispania, it appears in ancient sources such as the itinerary inscribed on the Vicarello Cups as well in as the Antonine Itinerary.

The highway was named after the emperor Augustus, who ordered reconstruction of the previously existing ''Via Herculea'' (or ''Via Heraklea''), which ran from the Pyrenees to ''Carthago Nova'', and extension of the arterial roadway as far as ''Gades''. The works were carried out between 8 BC and 2 BC, taking advantage of what remained of roads that had existed in the time of the Roman Republic. Subsequently, it became an important communications and trade route between the cities and provinces and the ports of the Mediterranean. The Via Augusta was still used by the Muslim occupiers of southern Spain in the 10th century, who called it ''al-Racif''. Its route is currently followed by the N-340 road and the A-7 highway. North of Tarragona there remains a Roman Triumphal arch, the Arc de Berà, around which the road divides. At Martorell, the ancient Via crosses the river Llobregat on the Pont del Diable, which dates from the High Middle Ages (circa 1289) in its current form. At present, the N-IV N-420, N-340 and the Mediterranean Highway ( A-7, AP-7, A-70 ) follow the same itinerary in many sections as the Vía Augusta. In some sections of the current N-340, the Roman road was used until the 1920s, when they were paved during the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera.

Background information

The Roman Empire built roads extending to its far corners; once the Romans had conquered Hispania they began to build roads there as in their other territories. ''Hispania'', the Roman name for the Iberian Peninsula, included what is now Spain, Portugal, Andorra, and the southernmost part of France. When Augustus went to Spain between 16 and 13 BC, he saw the need for roads and ordered the construction of the Via Augusta, the longest and most important road in Hispania. The road passed from near the southern tip of present-day Spain on the Atlantic to the Mediterranean through the Guadalquivir valley and along the coast to the Coll de Pertús (Latin: "''Pertusium''") pass in the Pyrenees.

The Via Augusta linked Hispania Baetica in the south with the north of Hispania. The still extant Alcantarilla bridge, a double arched stone bridge over the River Salado in Utrera, about south of Seville, has an inscription on the cutwater of one of its pilings indicating that it was on the Via Augusta. The Romans built a fifteen-arched bridge over the River Baetis (the Guadalquivir) at Andújar on the Augustan road. In the second half of the 1st century, with the social stability brought by the ''Pax Romana'', the Roman city of Carmo, now Carmona, became a major crossroads on the Via Augusta and an important outpost in the Roman empire.

Several cities have traces of the roadbed, which roughly follows that of the current AP-7 motorway. There is a fairly long visible stretch in the municipality of El Perelló, in the province of Tarragona. The Arc de Berà is located on the section that passed just south of the city. The strategic position of Roman Barcelona (''Barcino'') on a spur road of the Via Augusta allowed the city's commercial and economic development. In Barcelona, the ancient Via Augusta corresponds to one of the main avenues, also called "Via Augusta", in the Sarrià-Sant Gervasi district, which connects the Avinguda Diagonal with the Vallvidrera tunnels, passing through Plaça Molina. A large part of line 6 of the Generalitat of Catalonia Railways passes underneath the Via Augusta roadbed.

The Roman Arch of Cabanes, in the flat area known as ''Pla de l'arc'', northwest of Castellón in the Valencian Country, crosses the Via Augusta, which followed the inland valley in the province. This arch is now located in a roundabout of the CV-157 that still retains a certain resemblance to the appearance of the ancient Roman roads due to the rows of trees lining both sides of the highway, although the original route of the Via Augusta, which today is marked in many regions as a livestock route, does not always coincide with the current roads. However, the CV-157 road does not follow the southwest–northeast orientation that the Via Augusta followed in almost all its route, but rather west–east. This is because, as in other regions of Spain (e.g., Barcelona, Cabanes, and Tarragona), the Via Augusta crossed sparsely populated areas, generally along interior valleys parallel to the coast, so that almost all the Roman cities, especially those on the coast, were reached by secondary roads perpendicular to the Via Augusta. Branches used for military purposes also ran to the interior.

The Via Augusta is documented and referenced in two central places in Valencia: the first is next to the Valencia Cathedral in the Almoina Archaeological Centre, which houses archaeological excavations made between 1985 and 2005 that revealed stratigraphic layers representing successive eras of the city's history, and the second place is next to the old Palace of the Borgias, now the Valencian Parliament. A few tens of metres of the pavement of the road can be found in the Almoina Museum, as well as remains of six Corinthian Order columns of the Temple of the Nymphs (''Templo de las Ninfas'') from the same period, a stone well, and remains of Visigothic and Arab houses. There are also milestones in San Vicente street (the city exit to the south) and in the Alameda de Valencia (the city esplanade).

The city of Lorca (known as ''Eliocroca'' in Roman times) in the province of Murcia has several vestiges of the Via Augusta, including two Roman columns, the San Vicente Ferrer and the Baldazos milestones (La Hoya), respectively, of Emperor Augustus (8–7 BC) and Emperor Constantius Chlorus, preserved in the Archaeological Museum of Lorca (Museo Arqueológico de Lorca). The milestone of Constantius Chlorus was found in 1929 at Baldazos, in the Diputación of La Hoya, six km from Lorca. During Roman times this hamlet was a ''mansus'',Latin: from ''mansus'' (the perfect passive participle of ''manere'', 'to remain" or "to stay"), an official stopping place on a road, maintained by the central government for the use of officials and those on official business whilst travelling. or official stopping place. Another milestone, the El Hornillo milestone, was found by a citizen on 5 February 2013 in the course of the River Guadalentín, upstream from Lorca; Like the San Vicente Ferrer column, this column dates to the reign of Caesar Augustus; it is currently on display in the vestibule of the Museo Arqueológico de Lorca (MUAL).

The Column of San Vicente Ferrer, dating to the reign of Caesar Augustus (CIL II 4937) is inscribed:

This is the abbreviated form of:

The inscription translated to English reads:

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History

The Via Augusta was the great imperial road of Spain, and as a continuation of the ''Vias'' Julia Augusta, Aemilia, and Flaminia, it formed a major link in a chain of roads connecting Rome with the Atlantic Ocean. Its usage allowed the development of cities such as Valentia (Valencia), Saguntum (Sagunto), Lucentum (Alicante), Saetabis ( Xàtiva), and Ilici (Elche

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