This was highlighted in the opening ceremony held this Friday, September 29, where the mayor, Fernando Priegohas been accompanied by the territorial delegate of Culture Eduardo Lucenaand the delegate of Technological Development, Digital Transformation and Youth of the Provincial Council of Córdoba, Sara Alguacil.

It is an archaeological enclave that offers to citizensafter the first steps carried out by the City Council in the year 2006 for the purchase of landas the first mayor pointed out and that “we finally opened the doors of this important site that during more than a decade it has been the subject of study and analysis and that turn it into a point of interest morefor those people who wish to know our past and whose importance and dimension positions our city at an international level.”

A project that, directed by Fernando Quesadaprofessor of Archeology at the Autonomous University of Madrid, sees the light after four excavation campaigns carried out between 2015 and 2021. A study of the archaeological materials found, also hard work for their enhancement and its accessibility.

Works that have been explained after the opening ceremony, where a has been shown recreation of life in this historical period in charge of the group Iberian Worldwho highlighted the importance of this fortified palace complex from the Iberian period, not only for the knowledge of the Iberian peninsular culture, but also for strengthening a sector such as the inland tourism and for which the file has already been initiated for the declaration of the site as Asset of Cultural Interest (BIC) by the Junta de Andalucía, following the request made by the council.

All this series of works that have now come to an end will continue at least See you next year with other research projectsthanks to the agreement that the council signed with the Autonomous University of Madrid and that will allow us to know in depth what, at least for 2,500 years, the slightly more than 400 square meters on the ground floor have treasured and that date back, at least, to the 5th century BCwhere the first building was probably an Iberian sanctuary.

space history

The site has been protected under a great cover. In this space there was throughout the centuries a prolonged human occupation on the top of said hill from the Neolithic and the Bronze Age. After a first phase of the Bronze Age, the construction of this large fortified enclosure took place, already in Iberian times in the 2nd and 1st centuries BC. Later, after a intentional destructionstill served to reuse its ruins for a short time before its final abandonment, in the middle of the 1st century BC.

However, the human presence continued a few centuries latersince this hill would once again be occupied by a modest Islamic construction from the emir period of the 9th-10th centuries.

The excavations have revealed the existence of some large walls that reach four meters thicksomething unusual in the Iberian and even Roman walls, which confirms with almost complete certainty that the space would house two floors and a roof terrace, as well as a terrace ten meters in diameter, which welcomed through an access staircase. .

After his definitive abandonmentthe hill and the site were at the mercy of numerous lootings, being especially relevant what happened in the middle of the 17th centuryprobably motivated by the search for treasures after the expulsion of the Moors, as attested by a ditch that crosses the complex and by the glass and a coin from the reign of Philip IV found from that time.