Caesaraugusta

Stand still for a moment and feel the open air of the Ebro valley. The land here is wide and flat. The light falls hard on irrigated fields, poplars, and pale earth. A steady wind often moves across this plain. Locals have a name for that dry northwest wind: the cierzo. Listen to it as it passes. Two thousand years ago, Roman soldiers heard the same wind on their way to build a city downstream.

That city was Caesaraugusta. Its name came from the man who founded it, Caesar Augustus, the first Roman emperor. Today we call the place Zaragoza. The capital of Aragon lies further down the Ebro from Cortes. Say the two names slowly, one after the other. Caesaraugusta... Zaragoza. Centuries of speech in Latin, Arabic, and Spanish have shaped one name into the other. The city still carries the emperor's name, only worn smooth.

So why does this name matter here, in Cortes? Cortes sits in the far south of Navarre, close to the border with Aragon. It is part of the same river valley. In Roman times, this stretch of the Ebro belonged to the world that Caesaraugusta organised and supplied. The river was a road of water. Roads of stone ran beside it. The fields around you fed those roads.

People lived on this plain long before Rome arrived. Archaeologists have studied an Iron Age settlement near Cortes. It is a village of houses built close together, with walls of earth and mud brick. Downstream, where Zaragoza stands now, there was an Iberian town called Salduie. When the Romans came, they did not arrive in an empty land. They arrived in a valley that people had farmed for many generations.

Caesaraugusta was founded in the last decades before Christ. Most historians place its founding around fifteen to fourteen years before Christ. The first settlers were veterans. These were soldiers who had fought in Augustus's hard campaigns in northern Spain. Rome often rewarded old soldiers with land in a new colony. This was a practical idea. The veterans got farms and a home. Rome got loyal citizens on a key river crossing.

The Romans planned the city on a grid. Two main streets crossed at right angles. One ran north to south, and the other ran east to west. Near the crossing they built a forum, the public square for markets, law, and religion. Around it they added temples, baths, and shops. Later they built a theatre and strong stone walls. The whole design followed one clear Roman idea: order and control on the edge of the river.

Here is a detail many visitors miss. The Ebro was not only a border or an obstacle in Roman times. Boats carried goods along it. Caesaraugusta had a river port, with warehouses near the water. Oil, wine, grain, and pottery moved through the valley. When you look at the Ebro near Cortes, picture flat-bottomed boats and workers loading heavy clay jars. The quiet river you see today was once a working trade route.

The city also struck its own coins. Small bronze coins from the colony carried images of the emperor and its founding. One image showed a priest ploughing a furrow with two oxen. That scene shows a real Roman ritual. When a new colony was founded, a sacred furrow marked the line of the city boundary. Find these coins in a museum, and you hold that founding moment in your hand.

Caesaraugusta grew into one of the most important cities in the region. Later it became an early centre of Christianity in Hispania. After Rome fell, the Visigoths ruled here. Then, from the eighth century, the city came under Muslim rule. It was known as Saraqusta, a clear echo of the Latin name. In the twelfth century, Christian kings from Aragon took the city. Each new power built on top of the Roman streets.

This is the second surprise. Much of Roman Caesaraugusta is still there, under modern Zaragoza. For centuries, people walked over it without knowing. Building work in the twentieth century uncovered large parts of the old city. The theatre came to light under a block of houses. Pieces of the forum and the river port appeared beneath the city's squares. Today, several sites in Zaragoza are open as museums, often called the route of Caesaraugusta.

In those museums you go underground. The air is cool and the light is low. You see stone floors and drains. You see the bases of columns that once stood in the sun. Glass walkways let you stand above Roman streets. You hear the noise of the modern city above you, faint through the ceiling. Two cities share one place, one on top of the other.

If you visit Zaragoza, look for the Roman walls near the great basilica of Our Lady of the Pillar. The lower courses are large, carefully cut stones. Above them, later builders added brick and rough masonry. The wall shows repair after repair across many centuries. A single stretch of stone holds Romans, Muslims, and Christian builders together. Few places show the layers of a city so plainly.

Now come back to where you are standing. Look at the line of the land as it runs toward Aragon. Notice the irrigation channels, the straight edges of the fields, and the trees that follow the water. The Romans saw a valley that could feed a city, and they built one. As you walk on, listen again for the wind and watch the river. The same water still runs down toward the old colony of Caesaraugusta.