12 Jan The incredible Roman baths of Galicia that have been made fashionable by the last phenomenon of Netflix
In Porto Quintela, Ourense, where one of the best preserved Roman camps is located, the water temperature is between 36º and 48º degrees.
On the banks of the Limia River as it passes through the Ourense village of Porto Quintela, in the municipality of Bande, the vestiges of one of the best preserved Roman camps in the Iberian Peninsula survive. It is known as Aquis Querquennis and was erected between the years 69-79 A.D., during the reign of the Emperor Vespasian, not as a fort to shelter the legions during a war campaign, but to house the soldiers who were building the Via Nova, the XVIII road of the Antoninus Itinerary that united the towns of Astorga and Braga.
The location of the camp, with an area of nearly 25,000 square meters and which could accommodate about 500 legionnaires, not only responds to strategic reasons. The Romans discovered that there were thermal waters in the area, an element of vital importance for both the military and the civilian population because of its therapeutic benefits and recreational uses. These ancient open-air pools, with water temperatures between 36º and 48º degrees, are still used – free of charge – today. They are also the setting for the series El desorden que dejas, one of the latest phenomena of Netflix.
The Roman fort, completed with a roadway that would have been used to accommodate travelers on the road and with stables for the cavalries -a bread oven and a circular well were also found-, was abandoned around the year 120. The first excavations at the site were carried out in the 1920s, but the site would be submerged in 1949 due to the construction of the As Conchas reservoir. Research would not resume until 1975. At present, a museum-interpretation center can be visited at the site that narrates the process of conquest and Romanization.
The first two baths – arranged in pairs – were discovered among the rubble and mud around 1985. The key clue for the archaeologists were the bubbles that emerged from the bottom of the water – the heat coming from the hot springs mixed quickly with the cold of the reservoir. The Bande Town Hall and the Hydrographic Confederation have been recovering other small pools, which would correspond to the old facilities of a bathhouse founded in the 19th century.
“The thermal area of Os Baños de Bande has been object of important improvement works in the last years, emphasizing specially the intervention carried out in the pools and the recovery of some of the old baths; since the rise of the level of the water of the reservoir during several months limits nowadays, a better thermal use of the area”, they explain from the project Aquis Querquennis 3D. The site, despite its exceptionality, remains a great unknown.
The camp, according to the last investigations, was inhabited by the Cohors III of the Legion VII Gemina, one of the units that founded the city of León. The layout and elevation correspond to the usual scheme of the time, with a careful geometry and imposing gates in the wall. Thanks to the excavations, the headquarters, which were covered with tegula, two large hórreos (raised granaries) attached to each other for the storage of non-perishable foodstuffs, a building that would have served as a hospital or residence for the praetorium, and the drainage roads and channels have been recovered.
As for the legionnaire’s barracks, five have been prospected in their entirety and another partially. The rooms or conspiracies, in which up to eight soldiers could live, divided the building into two wings, were made of clay and were in turn broken into two parts: a space destined for the legionnaires’ sleep and the homes. At the entrance to the barracks there were circular bases, which would be the bottom of community ovens.
The wall of the camp, made of small granite blocks and a filling compacted with stony mampos, was the pillar of the defensive system. With the rounded corners and towers that were interspersed, it was about 3 meters wide and about 5 meters high. In parallel, on the outside of the perimeter of the wall, a moat was excavated, in a V-shape, four meters deep, interrupted only at the height of the four monumental entrances to the fort.
The defensive system was completed with the 11 m wide intervallum, a security space with no construction between the walls and the first line of buildings. Archaeologists have also investigated the latrines, where they have documented a drainage channel, a central sewer and a space in which wooden benches or toilets would have been placed, not preserved by the perishable material from which they were made.