The Tarragona They Don’t Tell You About

Two stones carry writing that probably looks unfamiliar.

Look for Hebrew letters and compare them with the other ancient stone pieces nearby.

You are looking at the Casa del Degà.

Set into its façade are four ancient stone pieces: two Roman cippi and two reproductions of medieval Jewish funerary inscriptions dated to 1300 and 1302.

The original Hebrew gravestones came from Tarragona’s medieval Jewish cemetery, which was located outside the old city near the coast.

The stones you see here are replicas, but the inscriptions preserve the memory of real people who lived in medieval Tarragona.

In a few centimetres of wall, more than a thousand years of Tarragona meet.

🏛️ Documented History

They are much smaller than you are expecting.

Look for rats — and the animal hunting them.

The Procession of the Rats

One of Tarragona Cathedral’s most curious medieval carvings depicts rats, a cat and a story that has been retold for generations.

According to tradition, rats repeatedly spoiled a nobleman’s food, even ruining a great banquet. A cat was finally brought in to defeat them.

Medieval visitors would have seen more than a funny animal scene. Animals represented in religious buildings frequently carried moral meanings.

◐ Medieval Tradition & Surviving Carving

You are looking for Casa Corderet.

Search its stonework for carved Latin letters.

The building reused a piece of Roman Tarraco.

Throughout the Part Alta, stone from Roman monuments was reused in buildings constructed many centuries later.

Casa Corderet, a historic candle shop in Carrer Merceria, is one of the places where ancient inscribed stone can still be noticed in a later façade.

Even one of Tarragona’s oldest shops is young compared with the stones around it.

🏛️ Documented History

The clue is much larger than the inscriptions you found earlier in the route.

This time, you are looking for a substantial Roman wall still standing above ground.

You are standing inside the former Provincial Forum of Tarraco.

Built in the first century AD, this vast complex occupied the upper part of the Roman city and was the administrative centre of the province.

Part of its enclosure wall survives in Plaça del Fòrum, incorporated into the city that grew around it.

A Roman government complex became an ordinary neighbourhood.

🏛️ Documented History

Look above the fountain, at the corner of the wall.

You are searching for a large stone ball resting on top of the pillar.

The cannonball of Plaça de Sant Antoni.

Tarragona was besieged by Napoleon’s army in 1811. After weeks of bombardment and fighting, French troops under General Suchet finally captured the city on 28 June.

According to local tradition, the stone ball you have just found is connected with the fighting that affected Tarragona and its fortifications during that period.

The siege of Tarragona is a documented historical event. The traditional identification of this particular ball with the fighting of 1811, however, is part of the story passed down locally.

Sometimes the smallest details in Tarragona carry the biggest stories.

◐ Documented Historical Context · Local Tradition

You have entered Tarragona’s medieval Jewish quarter.

The Call occupied this area behind the Cathedral.

Tarragona’s Jewish community had its own institutions and played an important role in the medieval city.

Ca la Garsa and the surrounding streets preserve fragments of that almost vanished world.

🏛️ Documented History

The Praetorium — traditionally known as Pilats.

Its origins are Roman and connected with the monumental complex of the Provincial Forum.

The structure was adapted repeatedly during later centuries.

In modern times, part of the building also served as a prison.

🏛️ Documented History

You are not simply standing beside it.

Parts of the modern city are standing on and inside it.

Later Tarragona grew over the Roman Circus.

Roman vaults and structures were absorbed into later streets and buildings.

The great arena once stretched through this lower terrace of the Roman monumental complex.

In Tarragona, archaeology is often not beside the city. It is underneath it.

🏛️ Documented History

The house is known today as Casa Castellarnau.

Charles V stayed here.

The buildings that later formed Casa Castellarnau were linked to the emperor’s visit to Tarragona in 1542.

The house itself reflects the layered history of the Part Alta, where later residences often stand over much older structures.

🏛️ Documented History

Compare the enormous stone blocks with the smaller and more regular masonry around them.

The wall itself is a timeline.

More than two thousand years are standing in front of you.

Tarragona’s Roman wall was constructed in different phases and was repaired and transformed repeatedly in later centuries. Around Portal del Roser, the changing masonry makes those layers especially easy to notice.

But there is another story connected with Tarragona’s walls.

A tradition repeated by local guides tells that, during renovation work in a house built into the old fortifications, workers discovered the mummified body of a French soldier hidden inside the wall.

The story is usually linked to the violent years of the French siege and occupation of Tarragona.

Was the soldier really found there? So far, we have not found documentary evidence strong enough to prove the story exactly as it is told.

Perhaps it happened. Perhaps Tarragona simply needed one last secret to keep inside its walls.

🏛️ Roman Wall: Documented History · ◐ Soldier: Local Tradition