Banos de la Reina, Calpe
About
At the foot of the Penon de Ifach, Roman settlers built their first dwelling at Banos de la Reina toward the end of the 1st century CE, later adding baths and expanding into a coastal vicus under the jurisdiction of nearby Dianium. The site combined residential quarters with fish-salting basins cut directly into the coastal rock, exploiting Calpe's fishing grounds for garum production. Archaeologists have excavated only about a quarter of the roughly 5,000-square-meter site so far. In 117 CE this working coastal residence and fishery had operated for a generation.
What happened here
A working estate with a comfortable house attached, and the proportions vary with how rich the owner is and how often he visits. The farm side has presses for oil and wine, threshing floors, storage sunk into the ground, stables and quarters for the workforce. The residential side has baths, dining rooms sited for the view, mosaics, and a garden with water in it. A manager runs the place year-round and reports; the owner arrives for the vintage and for the summer. Produce goes to market or to the owner's town house, and the accounts are kept in detail. Some villas are pure retreat with no farm at all, built on a cliff or a lake specifically to be looked at from a boat.
Sources
Roman Maps shows the empire frozen at 11 August 117 CE, the day Trajan died — its moment of greatest territorial extent. Explore the full map →