Wednesday 26th February 2025 – Avila, Spain

We were heading to Avila today but did some essential shopping at Lidl on the way. Our route took us on many arrow-straight roads across the plains. Some of them might have been created by the Romans as our first stop was at a Roman villa at Almenara de Adaja-Puras, known as MVR, the Roman Villa Museum. The museum not only presents the excavated remains of a large Roman villa but also explains Roman villas in general. I am a volunteer at Avalon Archaeology in Somerset and I have been very involved in the creation of a Roman mosaic for our Roman dining room, so I was very interested in the villa mosaics. The excavated site is huge and is covered by a massive metal building. Walkways above the ruins allow the visitors to see the site from above, which is especially useful for the mosaics. The mosaics were very impressive, although rather dusty – difficult to avoid when they are in their original position and not indoors. We encourage visitors to mop our mosaic, which really brings out the colours but museums are reluctant to do the same with the originals! The photographs below have been digitally enhanced to make them look as though the mosaics have been mopped.
In addition to the museum and the excavated site, MVR also has a very impressive reconstruction of a Roman villa complete with a bathhouse, although I don’t think that they ever fire-up the hypocaust.
Lunch was taken in the museum car park after it had closed at 14:00. On the edge of the car park was a ploughed field and I wandered along the edge finding large amounts of Roman pottery and tile. I suspect that the spoil from the early (19^th century?) excavations were spread on the neighbouring fields.
We drove on and were entertained by large numbers of storks both flying and on their nests. As on all of our journeys in Spain, we have saw lots of red kites flying gracefully in the search for carrion. The other thing that we noticed was the number of large churches in small villages and one was particularly impressive with six stork nests on its roof.
Approaching Avila was a really ‘Wow!’ moment as the massive city wall came into view. Our camping site, ‘Aparkarea Avila’ was just outside the walls but with a wonderful view up to it.
It was early afternoon, so we had time to walk into the city through one of the 9 main gates. The 11^th century walls of the city are complete with a length of 2,516 metres, 87 turrets and reaching to an average height of 11 metres. They are the best conserved examples in the world.
After a wander through the streets we returned to the van for dinner. When it was really dark, I took a walk to view the walls that had been beautifully lit.
Photos: The mosaic of an apsed room; Some excellent mosaic fish – much more realistic than some in Roman Somerset; The mosaic in the foreground is very similar to one that we laid at Avalon Archaeology – we nicknamed them ‘Jesters’ Hats’; The Roman triclinium (dining room); The Basilica of San Vicente just outside the walls of Avila; The walls at night.