Next Tuesday 23rd November at 18h, Manuel Olcina, director of the Provincial Archaeological Museum of Alicante MARQ, will give an interesting lecture at the National Archaeological Museum MAN in Madrid entitled "Roman nurseries and Villae Maritimae in Spain".
A talk in which Olcina will address a series of Roman constructions that until now have not been analysed with the attention they deserve and therefore have not been well interpreted. The most recognisable remains, excavated in the coastal rock, are to be found in the northern half of the Alicante coast in the towns of Jávea, Calpe, El Campello and Alicante (the latter next to the Roman city of Lucentum). A new installation of this type has also recently been proposed at Cape Trafalgar (Cádiz), although with less obvious remains than those found in Alicante.
Numerous nurseries are scattered along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea and there is very little evidence of both types of construction in the same place. In fact, most of the nurseries were part of sumptuous maritime villas, an element that made them stand out as an expression of the utmost luxury and ostentation.
The scarcity and uniqueness of these Roman constructions on the Iberian Peninsula, even with their remarkable monumentality and grouped almost all of them in a very specific stretch of the Spanish Mediterranean coast, are strong arguments for proposing measures for their conservation.
"Roman nurseries and Villae Maritimae in Spain" is part of a series of conferences dedicated to current archaeological research in Spain with the aim of giving maximum dissemination and visibility to archaeological activity, as well as raising awareness of the importance of archaeological heritage and the need for its promotion and conservation. Manuel Olcina has been director of MARQ since 2006 and has been a member of the Board of Trustees of the National Archaeological Museum since 2018.
