Santiponce

What's super cool about living in Spain, is that basically any city you go to is going to have something really cool about it. Since Spain used to be Rome, you can find super impressive ruins basically everywhere. Just a forty minute (or not even that long) and 2 euro bus ride outside of Sevilla is a city called Santiponce, or the old Roman city Italica, where the emperor Hadrian is from.

Aside from Mérida (which I'll blog about later) and Rome, Italy, Santiponce has the most well-preserved Roman ruins that I have ever seen.

I had never actually seen Roman mosaics before until coming here, not even in modern day Rome. These ones are incredibly well-kept.

The times when I don't know if a statue was broken apart from natural causes or a Catholic knocked its dick off.... No, but really, it would have a fig leaf on it if that were the case. I jest, I jest.

Can you guess what this is?

Water symbols, Neptune (Poseidon)....

It's... a swimming pool!

I think the tour guide told us this was an old bird house or something. I can't remember anymore though because I procrastinate updating this blog way too much... It's been a while.

Little pomegranate trees in this beautiful garden.

Old Roman oven. Pizza, maybe? :P

An old temple with all the gods representing the days of the week. 

Peepin' Minerva.

The Italica version of the colosseum where the lovely people of Rome got together to watch other people die for entertainment.

We got to walk around in all the tunnels on the inside.

Panorama view of the inside when I still had my iphone before someone stole it.  -.- 

Someone getting their wedding photos taken amongst Roman ruins. Casual.

When we went, the streets were basically empty aside from the other tourists seeing Italica. However, around 5 o'clock, rockets started going off, fountains came to life (which scared us all to death when they all popped on at once), and people flooded onto the main street to see some procession of one of the many virgins. 

Santiponce was a really cool place to go if you like your Roman history. While it's not as awe inspiring as Mérida, if you're living in Sevilla or there for a long time, you should definitely pay the 4 euro round trip and do a little day excursion.