Acueducto de los Milagros

Interesting facts

Mérida was supplied by three Roman aqueducts; besides Los Milagros there were the 15-kilometre Aqua Augusta from the Cornalvo reservoir and the San Lázaro aqueduct.

The Proserpina reservoir long linked to the aqueduct still holds water today behind its Roman earth dam and retaining wall.

Most of the conduit was a tunnel cut into solid rock that wound for about 10 to 11 kilometres along the contours of the land.

Each pier is built in alternating bands of five courses of granite blocks and five courses of brick, giving the striped grey-and-red pattern.

The channel ended on the Cerro del Calvario inside the city walls, where archaeologists found a nymphaeum that served as its monumental terminus.

Later surveys traced stretches of the channel running beyond Proserpina, suggesting the reservoir may not have been the aqueduct's original source.

One contested study placed the arcades as late as the 4th or 5th century, which would make them Visigothic rather than Roman; Mérida's mayor publicly rejected it.

The aqueduct was declared a Spanish national monument on 13 December 1912, more than eighty years before its UNESCO listing.

Why it is worth it

On the northwest side of Mérida, a line of tall pillars striped in grey granite and red brick crosses the valley of the little Albarregas River, carrying nothing now but arches and sky. This is what remains of one of the aqueducts of Emerita Augusta, founded under Augustus as capital of the Roman province of Lusitania. The standing stretch runs for about 830 metres and reaches 25 metres at its highest point, and it was the local people of later centuries, awed by its size, who named it the Aqueduct of the Miracles.

The construction shows its engineering openly. Each pier alternates courses of granite ashlar with bands of brick around a concrete core, and arches at several levels tie the piers together, the brick arches giving way to carefully cut granite over the riverbed itself. Some 73 piers survive in varying states. The water came from the direction of the Proserpina reservoir about five kilometres north of the city, by a mostly underground channel that followed the contours of the land before crossing the valley here and entering the city at its highest point.

Its date is more debated than the guidebooks suggest. It is traditionally attributed to the 1st century AD with later repairs, but a brick from the arcades has been dated by thermoluminescence to around the year 290, and some researchers argue the arcades were rebuilt then, or even later, to replace an earlier system; others dispute those findings. What is not in doubt is its place in the Archaeological Ensemble of Mérida, one of the largest archaeological sites in Spain and a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1993.

The arches stand in open ground beside the river, and a small Roman bridge over the Albarregas runs parallel to them. Early morning and late afternoon light bring out the colours of the stone. It combines naturally with a walk through the city's other Roman monuments.

Getting there

The aqueduct stands on the north-western edge of Mérida, about 0.8 km from the centre. The nearest airport is Badajoz (BJZ), about 41 km away. The site is an easy walk from Mérida's old town.

From the encyclopaedia

The Aqueduct of the Miracles is a Roman aqueduct in the Roman colonia of Emerita Augusta –present-day Mérida, Spain–, capital of the Roman province of Lusitania. It was built during the first century AD to supply water from the Proserpina Dam into the city. After the fall of the Roman Empire, the aqueduct fell into decay and today it is in ruins with only a relatively small section of the aqueduct bridge standing. It is part of the Archaeological Ensemble of Mérida, which is one of the largest and most extensive archaeological sites in Spain and was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1993.

Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Acueducto de los Milagros

Interesting facts

Why it is worth it

Getting there

Plan your visit

On these lists

From the encyclopaedia