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Roman Villa of Carranque

Carranque, La Sagra, Toledo

1 Villages · 2 Monuments · 2 Nature · 1 Activities · 1 Curiosities

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Roman Villa of Carranque

Nature · Carranque, La Sagra, Toledo

The Roman villa of Carranque, discovered in 1983 by a local resident during farm work beside the Guadarrama river, is one of the most notable mosaic complexes of Roman Hispania and may have been built by Maternus Cynegius, uncle of the emperor Theodosius, whose name appears on the mosaic of the main bedroom. It includes a late Roman site with a 5th-century Palatium, reused as a church in Visigothic times, as well as a paleo-Christian basilica and a nymphaeum. The palatial building, from around the year 400, was decorated with marble from Greece, Turkey, the Near East and Egypt and with glass-paste mosaics, comparable to those of the mausoleum of Galla Placidia in Ravenna. Excavations, begun in 1985, continue alongside the archaeological park, open to the public since 2003.

Photo: Samuel Lopez Iglesias (CC BY-SA 4.0)

What to see and do in Carranque