Ciutat romana de Pollèntia
Archaeological site · Mallorca
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Roman city founded by Quintus Caecilius Metellus Balearicus, traditionally dated to 123 BC, though excavated remains point to the first half of the 1st century BC. Located in present-day Alcúdia, it may have begun as a military castra before developing into the city of Pollentia.
A visit moves through three separate digs, the forum, the theatre and the residential quarter of La Portella, the excavated remains of what was the most important Roman city in the Balearic Islands for six centuries. The forum held three temples to Jupiter, Juno and Minerva sharing a single raised platform, plus a covered market and a row of shopfronts, the working centre of the town. The theatre itself did not stay a theatre: from the 3rd century AD it was reused as a burial ground, with trapezoidal tombs cut straight into its stage and seating rows. In La Portella, the Casa del Cap de Bronze takes its name from a life-size bronze head of a girl that was found carefully buried beneath its floor, hidden there for safekeeping. The city's own decline followed: a fire in the 3rd century AD, then a Vandal raid under King Genseric in 426 AD, left it burned and largely abandoned. Pollentia lay buried under earth and scrub for more than a thousand years before archaeologists began digging it back out.
What you see
A theatre built to seat up to two thousand people, its curved rows of stone seating cut straight into the natural rock of a low hillside rather than built up from quarried blocks.
Practical
The theatre sits on a separate plot from the rest of the site and is free to enter; one combined ticket covers the forum and La Portella ruins plus the museum in town.
roman ruinsarchaeological siteroman theatre