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A vision from archeology 'that was presented on Thursday, July 12 |
'The Old Cathedral of Cartagena.
A vision from the archeology ', by Antonio Murcia Muñoz, in Monographic Notebooks of the Museo del Teatro Romano, nº 2, was presented on Thursday, July 12.
The act was held in the Museum's auditorium, and intervened with the author, the Councilor for Culture and Archaeological Heritage, David Martínez;
Professor of Art History at the UMU, Cristóbal Belda;
the UMU Archeology professor, Sebastián F. Ramallo;
and the director of the Museum of the Roman Theater of Cartagena, Elena Ruiz.
The series Cuadernos Monograficos of the Museo del Teatro Romano was born with the vocation to disseminate the research work carried out from the Center for Museum Studies.
The approximately twenty years of archaeological intervention on the monument and its surroundings, and five years of restoration and architectural performance, have generated an extraordinary volume of primary information that allows the development of monographic studies, which aim to increase knowledge and dissemination of the historical process that took place. in this sector of the city.
Precisely, the partial overlay of the Old Cathedral on a part of the grandstand of the Roman theater, which today is valued as one of the greatest singularities of this archaeological site, is but the final result of a complex succession of phases and structures that have turned This area of ​​the city in an authentic history book, narrated from their material testimonies.
The Church of Santa María, also known as the Old Cathedral of Cartagena, is the oldest religious building in the city, with origins that date back to medieval times.
Its state of ruin since the beginning of the Civil War, together with that tradition of modern times, according to which the apostle Santiago had landed in Cartagena, founding the first church or cathedral in Spain, have generated around the building an aura of legend and confrontation capable of frightening or hindering the strictly scientific debate.
Fortunately, several historical-artistic studies have been carried out that, together with the archaeological excavations, have made it possible to advance knowledge about the history of the temple.
A building that is part of our history, on which various interventions have been made;
from those carried out by Pedro San Martín in 1958, 1976 and 1990, to the new excavations in the 90s where the theater's grandstand could be identified, to those developed in 2005 and 2007 within the framework of the Integral Project for the Recovery of Roman Theater of Cartagena that were aimed at the consolidation of its structures and the urbanization of its surroundings.
From that moment other actions have been carried out in the temple, such as those directed by Juan de Dios de la Hoz, between 2012 and 2013, centered on the chapels of the south aisle and on the roofs, and the most recent ones in the Chapel of Cristo del Socorro.
The monitoring and investigation of these interventions has allowed Antonio J. Murcia to deepen in the knowledge of the evolution of the building and its transformations through the stratigraphic study of its elevations and of the excavations of the subsoil, the metrological examination of the structures, the materials constructive, as well as the necessary historiographical analysis and documentary sources.
An analysis that starts from the consideration of the building as a historical document of the first magnitude, in whose structures are reflected the different constructive activities carried out throughout its history, a first stratigraphic reading of its walls is proposed based on the methodological parameters of the Archeology of Architecture, which together with the data of the archaeological excavations, and the documentary, typological, formal or metrological studies, have allowed to make new proposals on the evolution of the temple.
The author offers us a magnificent work, with more than 380 bibliographical references and more than 140 figures and illustrations, serious and rigorous, far from myths and legends, whose vocation is to contribute to the better knowledge of one of the emblematic buildings of the city, opening new paths for future research work, and providing a reflection on the necessary recovery of the building based on consensual proposals.
Antonio Javier Murcia has been part of the work team of the Roman Theater since 1995, carrying out the inventory and cataloging works, since 2005 the work of technical archaeological direction of the project recovery of the monument, and since 2008 is in charge of the Department of Documentation and conservation from the museum.
Source: Ayuntamiento de Cartagena
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