De Augusta Emerita a Mérida a través de la documentación gráfica

Laburpena

The urban center of Mérida, a Roman colony founded in the time of Augustus, is the result of a long process of formation and transformations spanning more than two thousand years of history, which have contributed to the richness and complexity of its urban fabric. The uniqueness of Mérida's Roman past means that today it has heritage elements of exceptional importance, in addition to an archaeological site declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. The knowledge of this inherited urban heritage is essential in order to consider the conservation and revitalization of the historic center that brings together the essential values of the city and constitutes its urban memory. We propose to know the evolution of the layout of the city from its foundation in Roman times as Augusta Emerita to the urban representation shown in the first historical maps produced from the nineteenth century, with the intention of identifying the pre-existences that have been preserved in the historic core of the city. To this end, the research has been approached from the point of view of the information offered by the graphic documentation, providing new keys to interpretation and hypotheses that have allowed us to propose another point of view to the historical study of the city and to advance in the knowledge of its urban form.