| Mirobriga ruins |
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Situated near the sea (Santiago do Cacém), and at an intersection of four strategic roads (between Sines and Beja and Alcácer do Sal and Lagos), Miróbriga in its heyday was a place of pilgrimage. Nowadays it is one of the treasures that the Romans left behind them and an essential place to visit. In the ruins of the Roman town you can find the only existing example in Portugal of a hippodrome - the place where they used to hold horse-drawn chariot races, such as those mythologised in the film 'Ben-Hur'. The races were a spectacle for crowds, attracting visitors from distant lands. News of the exploits of charioteers like Caius, Apuleius and Diocles, and the fieriness of the Lusitanian horses, is known to have reached Rome. Go to the forum (the public square, political, administrative and religious centre) and imagine what the main temple dedicated to the imperial cult, and another one dedicated to Venus, must have been like. Commercial areas, public baths, sewage systems - it is not difficult to visualise a town brimming with activity that reached the height of its splendour in the first century. See the two excellently preserved bath buildings, a bridge and many other things that made Miróbriga the celebrated city that Pliny the Elder, the first-century Roman sage and author of a famous 'Natural History', wrote about. |
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