On a teardrop of land jutting from a remote plateau in central Spain lies the Roman city of Valeria. Until recently, this important site could be described as having largely fallen through the cracks of archaeological investigation. Our excavations of the imperial forum in 2022 and 2023 as part of an ArchaeoSpain field school have begun to remedy this situation. Among the exciting results is the evidence that we have found revealing how Valeria’s architects imitated features of the Augustan forum in Rome, by incorporating a semi-circular space or exedra where statues dedicated to the imperial family and local elites could rub shoulders, creating what the historian Joseph Geiger has called a ‘hall of fame’.
City history
The city of Valeria is – together with Ercavica and Segóbriga – one of three large Roman centres that existed in the Cuenca province of Spain. All three of these cities saw their populations dwindle following the fall of Rome, meaning that their ruins have largely escaped being obscured or damaged by modern developments. Valeria was founded about 30km south of the current provincial capital of Cuenca. Despite the fascination 19th-century explorers felt for the ruins of Valeria and the advent of archaeological research at the site in the second half of the 20th century, our comprehension of the Roman city remains strikingly incomplete, due in large part to the sporadic nature of fieldwork and the sparsity of written records documenting what had been done.
It is thought that Valeria was named after the Roman general Gaius Valerius Flaccus, who established the city in the 90s or 80s BC. This was a time when fierce hostilities still existed between Rome and the local Celtiberians. Even 50 years after the death of the resistance leader Viriathus and the destruction of the Celtiberian stronghold at Numantia, Roman proconsul Titus Didius continued to raze cities, and sunder the limbs of adversaries, sell them into slavery, or treacherously slaughter them en masse after reneging on promises. Gaius Valerius Flaccus, proconsul of the province of Hispania during 93 to 81 BC, faced a similarly turbulent situation.
