Day 48: Roman off the Camino around Carrión de los Condes

Disclaimer: All voyages in this blog are being taken safely in the comfort of our imaginations - based on our plans and intentions for travel in 2020. What is reality after all? 

Carrión de los Condes seemed an interesting and convenient place to stay, irrespective of its location on the Camino de Santiago. However, the more we looked at the area, the more we found other aspects stretching back in time - and places to see nearby:

In our day here, we headed off northwards towards the town of Saldaña. Before we got there, we turned off the road to visit our first site, the Villa Romana La Olmeda. In a field, we found a large  and (we discovered) award-winning modern building:

that housed, in basically one large room, an ancient palace/Roman villa:

It was discovered by chance, while doing some agricultural work in 1968. A tractor uncovered remains of an ancient wall and that led to the discovery of a splendid Late Roman palace: rooms, corridors, porches…, a whole complex from 1600 years ago. Now it is one of the most important archaeological sites in the Spanish Roman world. The local description says:

"It is a big rural mansion or domus of the Late Roman Empire (4th century A.D.), whose main building or pars urbana – square and flanked by towers – is arranged around a central courtyard with peristyle that opens towards the different rooms, most of them paved with mosaics. This palatial villa covers an area of 4400 m2 with 35 rooms divided between the main house and the Baths complex and 26 of them are decorated with 1450 m2 of polychrome mosaics preserved in situ. The archaeological site was declared Asset of Cultural Interest on 3rd April 1996."

We bought tickets there that covered this site, and also the museum in nearby Saldaña and another excavation at La Tejada - where we'll go later in the day.

But first we wandered around La Olmeda, looking at the 27 rooms, 12 with mosaic floors, around a central patio crossed with mosaic paths in geometric patterns. The reception hall in the east wing has a particularly fine mosaiced floor. 

There are slightly raised semicircular apses in the northeastern and northwestern end rooms. The main body of the villa communicated with a baths by a grand passageway. The complex also included working and living quarters of more rustic aspect, kilns for baking roof tiles on the site, three burial grounds, and a section of paved roadway.

The display there also includes models of the ways the villa must have looked, including some rather cheesy lego-style reconstructions:

Then it was on to Saldaña to see the museum there.  We arrived at about lunchtime so wandered around the town a little: 

and settled on a place just opening in the Plaza Vieja:

for a quick bite:

and an argument over the last croquette:

It was back to the museum after lunch (it was now open again):

to see some of the exhibits from the villa, including a child's shoe:

and a small votive statue:

We learnt much of the above information from this visit.

To complete our triangular course, we headed southwest to the final site - the villa of La Tejada.  This is even more 'off the road' and a little difficult to find, as evidenced by the totally empty carpark, surrounded by trees:

But it provided a pleasant walk in to the smaller covered building, with another excavation:

The local information told us:

"This Roman settlement was on a farm belonging to the nobility. The villa dates from between the 1st and 4th centuries and was discovered in 1970. Today, excavations have revealed the layout of all the rooms and the paving. It was built in the late-Roman era (end of the 3rd century A.D.). Its mosaics are very interesting, and have geometric and figurative motifs. Particularly worth noting are the scenes of the 'Four Seasons', 'Neptune', 'the Swastikas' and 'Solomon's knots'. It also has one of the best surviving systems of hypocausts (subterranean heating systems)."

We could see the underfloor (or 'under-mosaic') heating system:

and enjoyed the fine mosaics here:

I think we perhaps enjoyed this more than La Olmeda - perhaps partly because of its isolation and sense of 'discovery'.

Then it was back to Carrión de los Condes (the Carrión is the local river, we discovered today), where we walked the short distance into the town for a local meal:

and ate modestly:

Tomorrow it's onwards to the north coast and Bilbao.