Exploring the World in 'Blue Velvet of Sark': Cartagena

Almost as soon as we got into Cartagena the wind picked up which was frustrating after several hours of motoring. However, we had achieved our objective of getting to Cartagena before the predicted high winds arrived.

The marina is very close to centre of the town and it quickly became apparent that there is a lot to see here. It has been under Carthaginian, Roman, Muslim and Catholic rule and for the last 20 years there has been some earnest excavation to reveal more clues about the city’s heritage.

Sitting in the cockpit planning our tourist activity we were overlooked by the Castillo de la Conceptión, so to start we climbed up there to get a good view of the city.

There are some incredibly elegant Modernist (~1880-1920s) buildings with beautiful facades, though some are very much in need of restoration, and so the repeated historical ‘riches to recession and back again’ history of this city is readily apparent. It has always been an important military and naval base but it is interesting to see that in modern times, as well as a flourishing refinery and container port, it seems also to have become a centre for work on superyachts. BV was certainly significantly smaller than the big boys in the marina.

From the vantage point of the Castillo de la Conceptión and the gardens surrounding its walls, we saw into both the impressive Roman theatre and the Roman amphitheatre (now just a shell awaiting restoration) as well getting fantastic views across the city and the harbour. Nearly every hill seemed to have some sort of fortification, which just highlights the strategic importance of Cartagena over the centuries. Clearly there have been a lot of city elders here who didn’t want to be invaded!

We also visited one of the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) air raid shelters which had been cut from the rock at the foot of the hill at the base of the Castillo de la Conceptión. The tunnels were not very photogenic but the display was very informative and we learned much more about the civil war than we had to date. It was a horrible period in Spanish history when an estimated 350,000 people died in fighting, various executions and other atrocities. We had not realised that Nazi Germany and fascist Italy had supported Franco’s Nationalist Rebels so extensively, nor that the USSR had supported the Republicans so much. During the war Cartagena was a Republican stronghold. Being a naval base and a strategically placed port for resupply it came in for a battering by Italian and German air raids. For their forces is seems to have been a practice run before World War 2.

We had deliberately packed a copy of Ernest Hemingway’s novel about the Spanish Civil War, For Whom the Bell Tolls. Neither of us has read it but it has just migrated to the top of the ‘read next’ pile.

The next stop was 2 millennia back in time to that impressive Roman theatre. Dating from the 1^st century BC, the theatre seated more than 6000 people and, despite its size, has only recently been uncovered.

Since about the sixth century AD the theatre has been almost completely hidden by other buildings and by 1986 this was a run-down quarter of the city. Since then, archaeologists have cleared the area and, layer by layer, Roman houses, Moorish dwellings, the ruined cathedral’s crypt and, of course, the Roman theatre have been exposed.

Architect Rafeal Moneo designed the museum and you enter the excavated areas through an underground passage beneath the ruined cathedral; it is very atmospheric, especially when you walk across the mosaic floor of an old Roman house that had been hidden for over two thousand years.

There is a great model and some excellent video reconstructions that show you what the theatre looked like when complete but the really impressive bit is walking over the ruins themselves.

Areas have been left which show how the fallen pieces of the theatre had been incorporated into the foundations of later buildings. It must be an archaeologist’s dream site.

Our time in Cartagena saw the end of Holy Week. Moored so close to the centre of the city we were easily able to see some of the parades as we explored. These parades had a different feel to the ones we’d seen further west. Far more regimented and disciplined, the penitents here kept perfect step with eyes forward and pointy hats kept still at all times. There was no milling around when the parade paused and, presumably to protect the newly tiled pedestrian areas, there were no real candles carried; growing wax balls were not a distraction here for the spectating children. Also, there were not multiple parades. There was just one parade each day but each was a monster with about 10 tronos. Only the more significant tronos were carried by bearers; the majority glided past on wheels with the odd foot appearing under the skirt to give a clue as to how they were propelled.