RUTA VÍA DE LA PLATA

Ruta Vía de la Plata is a modern tourist route running north-south through the west of Spain, passing through four autonomous communities and seven provinces (Gijón to Seville). It is nearly 900km long and goes through regions with a total area of over 120,00km2. The Route takes in important cultural and artistic heritage, as well as numerous archaeological ruins, left by the passage of different cultures over 2000 years. The route is also a journey around Spanish gastronomy and a sample of the ecological wealth and variety of landscapes that can be enjoyed in the Iberian Peninsula.

The Ruta Vía de la Plata was, in its beginnings, the great Roman road that linked the towns of Mérida and Astorga –Emerita and Asturica, in Latin– known as the “Iter ab Emérita Asturicam”, i.e. the road from Mérida to Astorga. This constituted the authentic backbone of the west of Spain two thousand years ago and had its natural prolongations to the towns of Gijón to the north and Seville to the south.

It was initiated around the year 139 B.C. by the consul Quintus Servilius Caepius, who defeated Viriatus. It was the emperor Augustus, however, who really pushed forward its construction, which continued with the emperor Tiberius. Trajan and Hadrian, both Hispanic emperors, gave it its definitive form.

It had inns where travellers could rest, bridges over streams and rivers, and its noteworthy milestones (miliarios), which as well as informing the emperor as to who had undertaken the work, indicated the distance in Roman miles to the city of origin on the Route.

Goods, troops, traders and travellers moved in continuous transit along this trail, which favoured the spreading of Roman culture, its language and way of life, at the same time as facilitating the control of the territory that the administration of the Roman Empire required.