Numerous studies, investigations, and excavations have allowed us to learn increasingly more about the history of Barcino, the Roman colony founded by Emperor Augustus in the 1st century. We can learn about their diet, how they cultivated oysters, how they bid farewell to the dead and which gods they worshipped, how they planned their streets, and how they built them. Research also demonstrates that nothing is immutable and that everything is open to debate. And debate took place this Tuesday during archaeologist Jordi Amorós's lecture on... the biggest archaeological find in the last thirty years in BarcelonaA monumental pavement from the Barcelona forum. A hundred people, many of them archaeologists and historians, filled the El Born auditorium, and more than fifty people followed the event via live stream.

When the Romans arrived in what would become Barcelona between 15 and 13 BC, they were looking for the best location to found a colony between the prosperous Emporiae (Empúries) on the north coast and Tarraco (Tarragona) on the south coast. The chosen site was the summit of Mons Tàber, a small hill overlooking the sea and the plain, where Plaça Sant Jaume is located today. The colony, with the full name of Iulia Augusta Faventia Paterna Barcino, grew rapidly, and in the 1st century AD it was walled and a forum was built. The construction work on the Gran Hotel Barcino, at number 3 Carrer Hércules, has unearthed an extraordinarily well-preserved section of this central element of Roman city life. The remains will be preserved and can be viewed in a museum space within the hotel.

Montjuïc Mountain isn't very high, measuring just 177 meters, but it has a long history and an umbilical cord with Barcelona. Most of the city's most emblematic buildings have been built with Montjuïc stone: the Roman wall, the Roman temple, the first Christian church, the Romanesque and Gothic cathedral, the Gothic palaces of the Ribera... The discovery of the remains of a quarry face from the Great Period, meters long and five meters high (seven, if you count the two hidden underground) can reveal many things about how it was exploited. It is the oldest documented Roman quarry in Barcelona and one of the oldest in Europe, and a section will be preserved: about eight meters that will form part of the parking lot for some apartments being built on Avinguda de los Ferrocarrils Catalans, between numbers 11 and 19. However, only residents and restoration technicians will be able to see it.