Complutum

About

Complutum was an ancient Roman city located in the present-day city of Alcalá de Henares, Spain. It has been partially excavated and the impressive remains can be seen today at the Complutum archaeological site south west of the current city, about a kilometre from the medieval centre.

The town grew up at a favourable site near the junction of several communication routes and near natural resources, such as the Henares river and the arable meadows around it.

It was a town of the Celtiberian Carpetani tribe in the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC whose hill fort ( oppidum ) occupied the Viso Hill nearby on the far side of the Henares river at a defensive position.

After the Roman conquest in the first century BC there was a first, unsuccessful city project on the same site but soon afterwards the citizens themselves chose to build a new city in the fertile valley of the Henares. This major project was in two stages, first under Augustus and then under Claudius (around 50 AD). In 74 AD Vespasian gave the city the status of municipium. It became the main urban centre and capital of a vast political territory, covering most of the current region of Madrid and Guadalajara.

The city was greatly enhanced in the 3rd century, despite the crisis that the empire experienced from then until its fall in the 5th.

During the Diocletian persecutions (r. 284–305) two young brothers (Justus was 13 years old, Pastor less than 9) were killed as Christian martyrs and are today the patron saints of Alcalá.

During the Visigothic period, an important road ran south from Complutum to the Mediterranean and north to Gaul.

The absence of archaeological legislation in the 19th century led to many objects being taken and sold. About half of Complutum was destroyed between 1970 and 1974 with the construction of the Reyes Católicos suburb.

In 1985 the Spanish Historical Heritage Law was approved, and the first scientific and regulated campaigns were carried out between 1985 and 1990, and again in 2003.

The limits of the city are known since archaeological surveys were carried out when the adjoining buildings were built. As in almost all the cities that were founded or rebuilt from the first century BC, the Romans used a Greek-inspired Hippodamian orthogonal grid of streets.

Complutum was built in two main sections: an older one to the east, built in the 20–30s AD, where the insulae are rectangular, approximately 32 × 42 m, and another to the west, from the 60s AD, with square insulae of 32 × 32 m.

15 decumani and 16 cardines were traced, occupying an approximate area of 48 hectares that housed 10,000 to 15,000 inhabitants in its heyday before the crisis of the 3rd century. The two main avenues, the cardo maximus and the decumanus maximus, intersected at the forum with the commercial areas, the main public and religious buildings, and the houses of the most important citizens.

The decumanus maximus is the most important street, because it was the road from Emerita Augusta (Mérida) and Toletum (Toledo) to CaesarAugusta ( Zaragoza ). Beside the road at the western gate was a fountain where nymphs and the goddess Diana were venerated, known today as Fuente del Juncal. At the southern end of the cardo maximus, on the banks of the Henares, another spring performed a similar function, the so-called de la Salud, in what was then a small river port.

The monumental forum complex of the 3rd century included a basilica, a curia, baths and two porticos with numerous shops ( tabernae ). It was built over an earlier forum and buildings from the 1st century.

A monumental façade adorned the forum, a high stone wall with large columns imitating the stage fronts of a theatre, covered in marble, topped with sculptures, and in the central opening a poetic inscription, a Carmen Epigraphicum (based on Virgil 's Aeneid ) that commemorated the renovation of the forum at the end of the 3rd century. The cryptoporticus was built to raise the floor and provide a more impressive facade and monumental entrance to the curia. To build this it was also necessary to demolish the east wing of the quadriporticus which until then had stood beside the baths. It stands above an aqueduct that supplied the north baths and therefore lost its original function.

The basilica was one of the most important places in the city as courts of justice and office of commercial agreements. It was built in the 3rd century over an earlier basilica and the north baths. The building had a central nave with a surrounding corridor, separated by a row of columns.

The north baths of the 1st century were attached to the early basilica. The caldarium consisted of a large heated room with opus signinum floor over a hypocaust whose heat was produced in a praefurnium of two large ovens located to the south. An apse on the south side included a hot water pool above which windows made the most of the sun. At the end of the 3rd century the baths were transformed into the curia, the meeting place of the senate. The hypocaust heating system was preserved to serve the senate members.

The curia was where the Paredón del Milagro (miracle wall) was situated, an object of Christian worship throughout the centuries, since tradition places the martyrdom of Saints Justus and Pastor on this wall, although it was probably here that the sentence was passed but was executed in the Campo Laudable just outside Complutum.

The southern baths were built at this time to replace the north baths. They were smaller than the earlier baths but, to maximise their size, the Decumanus IV was built over. Their layout was of a simpler linear provincial type with a succession of four heated environments: first, facing north, the apodyterium (changing room), second the frigidarium with a cold pool, then the tepidarium and finally the caldarium to make the most of the sun. The heated hypocaust with praefurnium remains in place for the last two rooms.

Located next to the forum, the auguraculum is an unusual public building: the collegium of the augurs (the priests who celebrate the rituals of divination and other purifying offerings), regulating religious lives of citizens and public activity.