page_title: History of Carmona, Spain
section_title: City wall and its gates
hierarchical_section_title: History of Carmona, Spain / Roman Empire / City wall and its gates
caption_attribution_description: Gate to Cordoba.
context_page_description: The history of Carmona begins at one of the oldest urban sites in Europe, with nearly five thousand years of continuous occupation on a plateau rising above the vega of the River Corbones in Andalusia, Spain. The city of Carmona lies thirty kilometres from Seville on the highest elevation of the sloping terrain of the Los Alcores escarpment, about 250 metres above sea level. Since the first appearance of complex agricultural societies in the Guadalquivir valley at the beginning of the Neolithic period, various civilizations have had an historical presence in the region. All the different cultures, peoples, and political entities that developed there have left their mark on the ethnographic mosaic of present-day Carmona.
  Its historical significance is explained by the advantages of its location. The easily defended plateau on which the city sits, and the fertility of the land around it, made the site an important population center. The town's strategic position overlooking the vega was a natural stronghold, allowing it to control the trails leading to the central plateau of the Guadalquivir valley, and thus access to its resources.
context_section_description: Carmona sits in an easily defended strategic location on a high plateau nearly impassable by armies because of the steepness of its slopes. The Romans reinforced these natural impediments with a wall and fortified gates, encompassing the entire perimeter. Julius Caesar famously wrote in his "Commentary on the Civil War" (Commentarii de bello civili): "Carmonenses, quae est longe firmissima totius provinciae civitas" (Carmona is by far the strongest city of the province). Today, nothing remains of those imposing defences except the Seville and Cordoba Gates and the foundations of a stretch of wall in the Raso de Santa Ana. The walled enclosure likely followed the course of the medieval walls that remain today, with few deviations, except in the areas of Arbollón and Cenicero, where the layout was changed as the two valleys silted in during the Roman imperial era. On a site excavated in the Ronda del Cenicero, the medieval wall had been raised on the remains of another built in the late Roman period. This in turn had been built on Roman ruins over sedimentation in the Valley of the Cenicero, indicating that the course of the imperial wall lay further inland.
  In the "Arbollón" (a natural stream bed at the northeast foot of the hill where the original oppidum lay) section of the city, an archaeological excavation conducted in 1989 documented the existence of a valley that had silted in during the Roman period, in the latter 1st century. The defensive walls would be located within this depression; the boundaries should coincide approximately with those of the triangular block bounded by the Convento de las Descalzas (Convent of the Barefoot Nuns) and the plaza of the same name.
  There were four gates where the axes of the two main roads of the city met the enclosure walls. The Seville and the Cordoba gates marked the western and eastern ends of the Cardo Maximus, while the Moron and Postigo gates stood at the north and south ends, respectively, of the Decumanus Maximus, which corresponds to the present-day Calle Prim.
  Seville gate (Puerta de Sevilla)
  The Seville gate and its bastion were built by the Carthaginians before the Second Punic War, probably dating from 220–230 BC. The Romans later made several modifications, focusing on reconstruction of the gate which allowed access to the walled town, and the sally port, located slightly north of the stronghold. They also made several changes to the bastion itself, which, like the gate, still exists. The Seville gate consists of two vaulted spaces framed by two arches above a courtyard forming an intervallum (a clearing between the walls and the city), while the sally port is made up of two arches that frame a space covered with a barrel vault.  Both works date from the first half of the 1st century BC. In the bastion of the stronghold, major Roman additions included the construction of a curtain wall, or facing, called a cortina, which augmented the structure's height, and a temple built in the second half of the 1st century BC of which the only remains are the podium on which it stood.
  Cordoba gate (Puerta de Córdoba)
  The current Córdoba Gate is the result of various renovations to the original Roman gate and to the still extant wall ascending the adjacent hill. It has three columns with Corinthian capitals set on each side of the entranceway and configured in the classical manner, standing on an Attic base without a plinth on a double socle; they are flanked by two semi-octagonal watchtowers. The parallel architecture dates the works to the reign of Augustus or Tiberius. The north tower was rebuilt after being destroyed in the earthquake of 1504. The current appearance of the gate is due to the intervention of the architect José Carmona of Echamorro, 1786–1800.
  Sedia gate (Puerta de La Sedia)
  In 1986, a section of wall was uncovered in a plot on Calle Torre del Oro which included the remains of an ancient gate with at least two arches of different sizes. Considering the wall's relationship to the city plan and the grid street pattern, a major Roman gate would be expected in thi
caption: Puerta de Córdoba
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