The Roman Theatre and Abric de Can Castellvi

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. The Roman Theatre

   Wherever you sit in the Roman theatre of Tarragona, you face the sea. The builders carved the seating into the slope of a hill that runs down to the shore, so that the audience looked past the stage toward open water, and the effect on a clear evening is of a stage set whose back wall is the Mediterranean. Only part of the structure survives, its curved terraces partly rebuilt and its stage area cluttered with the foundations of the later buildings that stood on it, and yet the shape of the whole is easy to read. It lies in the lower town, a few hundred metres from the harbour, and is one of the monuments of the Tàrraco ensemble listed by UNESCO in 2000.

   Read the complete The Roman Theatre write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   The Roman Theatre is where the day begins. Next is Triumphal Arch of Berá.

2. 2. Triumphal Arch of Berá

   For centuries traffic on the main coastal road of Catalonia drove straight through a Roman triumphal arch. The Arc de Berà stands on the line of the Via Augusta, the great Roman road from the Pyrenees to Cádiz, about twenty kilometres northeast of Tarragona, and until the road was diverted around it in the late twentieth century, cars and trucks passed under its single span. It was built at the end of the first century BC, and an inscription records that it was erected according to the will of Lucius Licinius Sura, a figure whose identity historians still discuss. It is part of the UNESCO listing for the Roman remains of Tarraco.

   Read the complete Triumphal Arch of Berá write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Triumphal Arch of Berá comes up about 27 km into the recorded legs. Next is Abric de Can Castellvi.

3. 3. Abric de Can Castellví

   The Penedès is wine country, and the landscape around Vilafranca del Penedès is a patchwork of vineyards rolling away toward the Montserrat massif in the north and the limestone hills of the Garraf in the south. Abric de Can Castellví is a small rock shelter in this landscape, one of the many sites of Levantine and schematic rock art scattered across Catalonia and included in the UNESCO serial site of the rock art of the Mediterranean Basin on the Iberian Peninsula. Like many such sites, it is modest in appearance, a hollow in the rock where faint painted figures have survived thousands of years, and access is often limited to protect the art.

   Read the complete Abric de Can Castellvi write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   about 60 km into the recorded legs you reach Abric de Can Castellvi. Next is back through Triumphal Arch of Berá.

4. 4. back through Triumphal Arch of Berá

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete Triumphal Arch of Berá write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   back through Triumphal Arch of Berá, late in the day. Next is The Roman Theatre.

5. 5. The Roman Theatre

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete The Roman Theatre write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Back at The Roman Theatre. That is the ride.